When I’ve taken multi-vitamins on a regular basis, I haven’t felt any better than I usually do. I’m not sure I got any fewer diseases than usual. So, what is the supposed value? Will you ultimately live longer? Be more resistant to disease? Do some people feel better, stronger, sharper, or other on an immediate basis? Does science actually back vitamin usage?
Go without ANY vitamins for a while and see how much different you feel. That will be hare though. The thing is, you get most of all the vitamins you need from your food. Unless you have very poor eating habits. Those multi-vitamins are not required but they help you get some of those less common vitamins out there.
I just make sure to eat a huge bowl of Total cereal every mornnig. 100% of all the healthy stuff right there.
Sailors used to get “rickets? ricker? scavies?”, something! They were all suffereing from something until they started bringing oranges on the long trips. The vitamin C is all they needed.
All right, let me rephrase the original question: Is there value to taking multi-vitamins above the standard eating fare of the average person? What is that value?
Vitamins are mostly coenzymes, that is, molecules that combine with enzymes to make them active. Because they go into enzymes, you don’t need much of them: enzymes are catalysts and a single enzyme can catalyze the same reaction over and over again.
The important vitamins are those that your body can’t manufacture for itself. You have to get them from your diet, and how much of a particular vitamin you need is enormously dependent on your specific diet. It is also dependent on other personal factors, like your ability to absorb that vitamin as it passes through your gut (which varies with the individual), your ability to modify it to its final form, the rate at which your body clears it, and so on. And the amount you need of a vitamin varies because of your age, sex, weight, exercise level, etc. It’s pretty hard to figure out the exact amount you need of all the different vitamins. Most people thus use vitamins as supplements. Supplementing your diet with multivitamins is sensible as an attempt to make sure your receiving the minimum you require of all the broad spectrum of vitamins available, but if you’re already getting what you need in your diet there’s no real point. If you are getting all the vitamins you need from your diet, taking more won’t do anything (a few vitamins can be harmful in large amounts, but you’ve got to take REALLY large amounts; the only actual cases of vitamin poisoning I’ve ever heard of involved unfortunates in the hands of quack medical practitioners who prescribed ridiculous amounts of a vitamin - generally beta-carotene, which is metabolized into vitamin A).
All that said, LOTS of Americans have crappy diets and low-grade vitamin defficiencies are not at all uncommon. Medical research tends by its nature to view people as statistical constructs, which can miss things that are strongly individual. The strong need to suit the diet (with or without supplements) to the individual is only beginning to be dealt with systematically. Things like the RDA are bare minima, and strongly politicized at that, for various reasons. Claims that a given food contains X% of the needed amount of vitamin whatever should be highly suspect: is that for a sedentary, 65 year old, post-menopausal, 135 pound, Norwegian female? Or for a 22 year old, 220 pound, highly active, Vietnamese male? It is simply not true that both require the same amounts of the different vitamins.
For you personally, if you don’t see any effect, bear in mind that some vitamins are thought to be prophylactic against cellular damage. In other words, taking anti-oxidant vitamins over the course of your life may help suppress some effects of aging. This is not bogus science, but it isn’t totally rock-solid yet, either (it’s a very difficult experiment to do, as you might imagine). I’d say, examine your wallet and if you can afford a good multi as a minor expense, it’s not a bad idea. But if you don’t notice any difference and you don’t want to spend the money on vitamins, just forget the supplements and tend to your diet.
See, when you type long posts, people post things things while your typing, and then you have to say more. Ricketts is due to vitamin D deficiency, and results in abnormal bone development when it strikes children. Your body can actually manufacture this vitamin, but it requires sunlight on your skin to do it. It has become very rare in the U.S. as milk now has vitamin D added to it as a matter of course.
What sailors used to get was scurvy, or vitamin C deficiency. This results in the decay of connective tissue, which manifests as teeth falling out, open sores on skin and gums, and muscular weakness. Yuck. Vitamin C is very heat labile, so cooking largely destroys it. That’s unfortunate, because potatoes are just about the richest source of C you can find when they’re raw, but nobody eats them that way. After they’re cooked, you’re better off with citrus fruits, which are slightly less rich in C, but since you eat them raw you get more C. Hence the eventual discovery that limes prevent or cure scurvy - the origin of the term “limey” for a British sailor and eventually any Brit.
The restricted diet of sailors has led to the discovery of other vitamin deficiency diseases as well. The Japanese Navy in the first part of the twentieth century started suffering from a disease called beri-beri. Although this started around the time they started eating shelled rice (a new form of processing), this connection was missed and the disease was thought to be contagious for quite awhile. Eventually someone figured it out: there’s a B vitamin (I forget which - 12, I think) in the rice hull, but only in the hull. Since japanese sailors ate mostly rice, when they switched to shelled rice the deficiency started to appear.
scavies… scurvy
Hey, that’s close.
I have a morning ritual of downing a vitamin E , a beta-carotene, a b-complex with C and, most importantly, a 1000 mg. C tab. Sometimes I buy the timed-release C. As suggested, I’m not sure it does anything, but may help. I think of it as cheap insurance.
I started this because of getting lots of colds, particularly nasty sore throats that would hang on for weeks. I figured Linus Pauling was a Nobel laureate, after all, and might not be entirely out to lunch, so I went to some effort to get myself in the habit of taking large amounts of vitamin C. I added the others on general principal. If nothing else, one of the B vitamins turns the urine VERY yellow, and serves to remind me if I forget to take them.
Also demonstrates that I’m literally pissing my money away on the vitamins, I suppose.
I can say that I’ve had far fewer colds. Whether the C really has anything to do with it I don’t know, but as long as it’s cheap, and there’s no evidence that it does any harm I’ll keep taking the vitamins.
Pauling was a big believer in Vitamin C, but not for any good reason. In fact, fired a researcher whose studies dared to cast doubt on his Vitamin C theories, and then rightfully got sued.
Someone else mentioned the RDA is a bare minimum. Not according to what I have heard, which is the RDA has a “buffer zone”. That is, it’s much more than a bare minimum. After all, no one gets 100% of the RDA every day for every vitamin. One day you may have lots of Vitamin C, the next day you may not get any. The point is, 100% of the RDA can last for a while, much longer than a day.
I’m a bit distrustful of vitamins. To me, it’s just marketing. It’s easy to scare consumers into believing that they are not healthy, and that everything will be right if they take this little pill. The funny thing is is that people who use vitamins tend to be the same people who are into natural, unprocessed foods. I have no idea how they think taking a vitamin pill is natural.
Keep in mind that the US RDA is only an estimate, as shown by the fact that other countries have wildly different recommended doses for some vitamins than the US has. Also, I just read that the FDA is strongly considering raising the RDA of vitamin C from 60 mg/day to 200 mg/day. If they do, it will be tantamount to admitting that they were underestimating the requirement by a factor of more than 3 for several decades. (Admittedly it may be that they just want to be on the safe side.) But still, if they don’t know how much we need, I don’t either. I doubt there is any danger in taking up to 1000 mg/day. Kidney problems can appear with long-term ingestion of 2000 mg/day or more.
Part of the problem with vitamin C is that humans are among the few species that don’t synthesize their own vitamin C. I remember reading an estimate that in order to bring our vitamin C level up to the level that most other animals have, we’d have to take 500-2000 mg. a day. (I’m not suggesting we need to take that much.)
A reasonable diet will give you all the vitamins you need. Unfortunately, relatively few Americans eat a reasonable diet.
Quick sidetrack: I’ve heard that not all vitamins stay in your system for very long, vitamin c is one of them (it supposedly leaves within 24hrs). Also our bodies can only store so much of certain vitamins so “stocking up” isn’t always an option.
Total tastes like tree bark. Fortunately I have discovered that if you pour a cold Coke over it instead of milk it is almost tolerable. If you run out of Coke you can substitute beer or champagne.
I’m actually working on some stuff related to the synthesis of Vitamin E. Kind of a neat compund, though completely pointless to synthesize–you can extract it very eaily from a million different sources.
“Scurvy”
That’s such a fun word. I mean, if you were going to get a horrible possibly-deadly disease, wouldn’t you want it to be one with a fun name like “scurvy”?
A number of people have made statements to the effect that if you eat a reasonable, prudent diet you’ll get enough vitamins. This is true but I believe there’s one notable exception.
It is almost impossible to get vitamin E in sufficient quantities from your diet to achieve the levels that are possibly effective to prevent heart disease (and maybe more). With a few exceptions, vitamin E is hard to come by in most people’s diet. Supplements are required to achieve the levels of vitamin E associated epidemiologically with low rates of heart disease (i.e. statistically in polpulations).
I must be honest and point out that in the one huge study that looked prospectively at the use of vitamin E supplements, and that had a placebo control, no benefit was demonstrated (the HOPE study).
Regardless, I take vitamin E supplements. The theoretical rationale and the epidemiologic data suggesting benefit are too convincing to be outweighed by one, albeit large, randomized, placebo controlled study, IMHO.
Just what I’ve wanted to hear! I just criticized my mother for wasting her cash on chiropractors, and here I am blowing money on vitamins that may or may not help. I have been taking Centrum multivitamin/mineral for 6 months, faithfully, every day, and still find I’m lacking in areas. I was just deferred by the Red Cross as a donor because my hemocrit didn’t make the grade. They suggested more iron. I’ve gotten the RDA of iron every day for 6 months, and still can’t make par. Hmmmm. Guess I could always lick some rusty pipe before I donate again.
Bear_Nenno wrote:
According to the delightful little book Longitude, what they started taking on long trips was sauerkraut. Lots of vitamin C, and it doesn’t go bad. Or depending on your tastes, doesn’t get any worse.
Out of curiousity what is hemocrit?
Wishin’ my hair was still red. 
They always measure your red blood cell count before you can donate. It separates the solids from the liquid portion, and it must measure 38% or better to be a donor.
If you eat right, you shouldn’t need any vitamins. If your diet is poor, then vitamins may help. It seems like the scientific jury is still out whether vitamins in addition to a healthy diet do anything or not. One exception may be anti-oxidants like vitamins C & E which may have long-term (anti-cancer) benefits that are not readily measureable.
not sure…just my impressions
isn’t there some question as to whether the body can even digest vitamins like this?
I’m curious too.
Some vitamins are actually harmful in large quantities. Water soluble vitamins, like C, will pass right through your system if taken in excess quantities. Any vitamin C not used imediately by your body goes down the toilet.
Vitamins A and D are “fat soluble” vitamins, and will build up to toxic levels in your body if you take mega doses of them over long periods of time. Excess vitamin D can cause muscular and nerve damage, and A does some nasty stuff as well, though it slips my mind as to what…
APB9999:
Generally excellent post, APB9999, but there is one thing I wanted to clarify.
The fruit referred to by British sailors as “limes” were actually what everyone else knows as lemons. Lemons are what they stocked their ships with and ate to prevent scurvy (perhaps contributing to the stiffness of their upper lips).
In one of the British Admiralty’s fabulously-woe-beset expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in the 19th-century, this nomenclatural quirk caused a big problem. The explorers’ ships were stocked with actual limes instead of lemons. Limes have substantially less Vitamin C than lemons. Everyone got scurvy.
My reference for the above paragraph was the excellent book, The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton.