Do Daily Vitamins Really Work

Take Care Of Your Hair

It doesnt matter how many hair supplements you take if you dont treat your hair right! Poor hair care habits lead to breakage, which is when your hair snaps off. Not what you want!

First things first, put down the hot tools. Hot tools like curling irons and straighteners zap the moisture right out of your hair, leaving it brittle and prone to breakage. Save your hot tools for special occasions only and always use a quality heat protectant spray before styling.

Other ways to reduce breakage include brushing hair gently and using a regular hair repair conditioning mask like our Hair Growth & Protection Mask.

Hair Growth & Protection Mask

Do You Need A Multivitamin

Samantha Cassetty, a registered dietitian based in New York City and the coauthor of Sugar Shock, told TODAY she doesnt recommend multivitamins for most people she focuses more on food. You can get most of what you need from food, she said. But a lot of people dont eat that well.

Cassetty sees the expense as the main downside of multivitamins. If you feel the cost of a multivitamin exceeds what the value should be for you, you absolutely should not be doing that, she said. But if the added assurance makes you feel better, I dont see the downside.

There Is No Such Thing As A Magic Pill

Out of the 90,000 supplements available, Dr. Jalili suggests there are two that may be worth taking:

• Fish oil – Early research into fish oil supplements has shown it may help reduce a person’s risk of primary cardiovascular events.

Vitamin D

For both of these supplements, recent research has shown that these pills provide only a minimal benefit. Neither present any serious adverse effects. With the low risk and small potential benefit in mind, Dr. Jalili takes both supplements.

It’s important to keep in mind that no supplement will completely fix the health effects of a bad diet. The one good rule is: “Eat healthy foods that are good for you.”

“Eating unprocessed, plant based foods is good for you. We can all agree on that,” says Dr. Jalili, “It’s everything beyond that we have to be open minded and objective about. And be prepared to change our mind if the facts change.”

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Are There Side Effects To Hair Vitamins

I know what youâre thinking: Whatâs the harm in taking hair growth vitamins and supplements, justin case they do end up helping? But sadly, thatâs not how vitamins work in a healthy human. Even if you were to ingest triple the vitamins your body needs , you still wouldnât reap triple, or even double, the hair growth rewards.

Why? Because your body keeps only the vitamins it needs and then gets rid of the rest, says Burg. Itâs kind of like pouring water into a glass thats already 100 percent full. So unless youre actually missing some key nutrientsi.e., youâre vitamin deficientyoull usually end up peeing out the excess vitamins pretty soon after you ingest them.

Vitamin Doses: Is More Always Better

Pretty much everyone and their mother has tried the old-school home remedy of megadosing vitamin C when they feel a cold coming on. After all, vitamin C is renowned for its immune-boosting properties, and since grade school, we are taught it helps fight off illness.

So, does this mean you should take as much vitamin C as possible when you feel like youre getting sick?

The short answer: No.

Overloading your body with any substance, whether its healthy or not, doesnt translate to even greater benefits. In the case of water-soluble vitamins like vitamin C, taking an excessive amount will simply lead to the majority of it being flushed down the toilet. The body can only make so much use of the substances you consume.

A review of clinical trials on vitamin C supplementation found that people who regularly took vitamin C were no less likely to experience colds than those who took a placebo.

However, the authors of the review noted that active people and athletes may benefit from a vitamin C supplement since the stress from intense exercise can weaken the immune system. Regular use of vitamin C may also reduce the duration of colds by a small margin.

So, yes some vitamins do work for the better.

But its not always about finding multivitamin supplements that contain the most vitamins and minerals. The quality and balance of vitamins and minerals in a multivitamin generally supersedes the quantity.

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Multivitamins Vs Whole Foods

When it comes to the essential nutrients our bodies need to thrive, its hard to beat what nature provides. Thats because most of the vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that you get from whole foods are superior to the same nutrients delivered in a pill, notes Taylor.

Studies offer proof that a multivitamin will not give you the same health benefits as food:

• Eat your broccoli. Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables contain components that provide wonderful health benefits, such as helping prevent certain cancers and decreasing inflammation. A 2011 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that those key components were poorly absorbed and lacked value in pill form.
• Careful with calcium pills. One study found that calcium supplements can increase the risk of a heart attack. Many doctors recommend that people with a high risk of heart disease get their calcium through diet rather than supplements.
• Beware of the multivitamin danger. Another study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that certain dietary supplements, including multivitamins, folic acid, iron and copper, appeared to be associated with an increased risk of death in older women.

But not all vitamins come with health risks especially if you use them after consulting your doctor first. Some essential vitamins and nutrients are best absorbed in pill form. These include:

Do Multivitamins Make You Healthier

Some experts say it’s time to give up on daily multivitamins to preserve health, but others disagree. What should you do?

If you take a multivitamin, it’s probably because you want to do everything you can to protect your health. But there is still limited evidence that a daily cocktail of essential vitamins and minerals actually delivers what you expect. Most studies find no benefit from multivitamins in protecting the brain or heart. But some Harvard experts think there is still hope.

“There are potential benefits and there are no known risks at this time,” says Dr. Howard Sesso, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It is worth considering a multivitamin as part of a healthy lifestyle.”

Caught between expert opinions, what do you do? Start with asking yourself why you would consider taking a multivitamin. If you suspect your diet is nutritionally lax, focus your efforts there.

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You May Be Misled Into Thinking You Don’t Have To Get As Many Nutrients From Whole Foods

“Obtaining your nutrients from food is always the best first-line approach to ensuring adequate nutrient intake. The purpose of a nutrition supplement is to fill in nutrient gaps that you may not be getting from your food, but it should never be considered a replacement or ‘free pass’ to fix a nutrient-depleted diet,” says Ansley Hill, RDN, LD, a nutrition contributor at Clean Green Simple.

Dr. Jinan Banna, PhD, RD, a registered dietitian and professor of nutrition shares that getting nutrients from whole foods provides you with nutrients that multivitamins can’t: “Food contains lots of other important compounds for our body, such as those that function as antioxidants. If we try to get most of what we need from supplements, we may be missing many other important components of the diet we need for optimal health.”

“Eat a wide variety of foods, especially plant-based foods, as they are not only great sources of vitamins and minerals, but also provide fiber, antioxidants, and phytochemicals, which a nutritional supplement does not have,” adds Melissa Nieves, RD, a registered dietitian at Kemtai, the virtual personal trainer company.

How Much Do We Need Every Day

According to the doctors and scientists at the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, to meet our basic needs for each vitamin, assuming youre an average healthy adult man or woman, we can follow the Recommended Dietary Allowance chart.

Check out the chart to see the RDAs for vitamins. These are the minimum amounts you should be getting every day, preferably from your food .

If you were counting, you would have noticed that this chart has only listed 11 vitamins. Two B vitamins, biotin and pantothenic acid, are not listed here. Thats because even though you need to have them, they dont have RDAs. Why not? Because you get these vitamins so easily from your food, even if you have incredibly bad eating habits, no one is ever really deficient in them. And if no ones ever deficient, theres no point in bothering to set an RDA.

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Which Vitamin And Mineral Forms Are Optimal

It would be extremely time-consuming to discuss the best and worst forms of all vitamins and minerals. However, there are a select few that stand out when looking at a mens multivitamin.

Notably, if youre taking a mens multivitamin that contains magnesium oxide, you can safely presume that it is not the best quality.

How poor is the bioavailability of magnesium oxide, you ask? A pitiful 3% or less

A recent clinical study found that healthy adults who supplemented with 300-mg of magnesium oxide daily for two months had no difference in serum magnesium concentrations than those who took a placebo. This is to say that magnesium oxide was no more effective than a sugar pill .

The same study also showed that those who supplemented with a matched amount of magnesium citrate had three-fold higher serum magnesium levels than the magnesium oxide and placebo groups.

In general, salts and chelated forms of minerals, like those in HYDRASURGE, are well-absorbed.

Are Hair Vitamins Better Than Multivitamins

In my opinion, hair vitamins and multivitamins essentially do the same thing. However, I prefer hair vitamins over multivitamins. Hair vitamins usually contain everything that an average multivitamin has and other nutrients that help support healthy hair growth. For example, youll find things like MSM, silica, selenium in a good hair vitamin. But, you might not find them in a regular multivitamin.

Again, I use multivitamins too because they are easily accessible and often slightly more affordable. The bottom line, they pretty much do the same thing.

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The Measure Of Good Health

The one thing you may have noticed about the vitamin chart is the way in which the RDAs are mentioned in different measurement units like mg and mcg. Usually, the amounts of vitamins are given using the metric system. Metric measurements are not always used. But when it comes to vitamins, minerals, and supplements, you have to understand the measurements:

One gram equals to 1,000 milligrams . One gram is approximately equal to one-quarter of a teaspoon, or 0.035 of an ounce. There is about 4,000 mg in a teaspoon.

One milligram equals to 1,000 micrograms . A microgram is 1/1,000 of a milligram.

Why Most Multivitamins Dont Work

After reading all that, you might be wondering why you cant just take a multivitamin and call it a day.

While multis do contain practically every nutrient on the planet in a convenient little pill, that doesnt mean theyre as effective as eating a diverse diet.

Multivitamins can have nutrients like calcium and iron in them that dont absorb well together, Linge says. It all takes you back to thinking about food as your best resource.

Along with pairing ingredients that dont play well together, vitamin manufacturers are guilty of luring in buyers with misleading claims.

Supplement companies often market their vitamins as being nutritionally complete, but if you really take a look at the labels, many times theyre not even close.

Thats a big problem with the gummies. Linge says. Theyre missing a lot of nutrients and they dont tend to be as complete, even if they are nice and chewable and flavorful.

And, no, the Food and Drug Administration doesnt review dietary supplements for their safety or effectiveness, nor does it approve claims about these supplements purported health benefits.

On the opposite end, certain supplements might say they provide 400 percent of your daily vitamin C, leading you to think youre getting four times the nutritional boost each day. But thats simply not the case.

Your body hits tissue saturation at some point, Linge says. After that, youre just feeding the salmon out in the sound.

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If You Live North Of Memphis

While youre ideally soaking up a few minutes of midday sun throughout the year to make enough vitamin D, thats simply not possible during winter here in Seattle or anywhere else above 35 degrees latitude, basically north of Memphis.

The problem isnt just overcast skies its that the sun isnt able to get high enough during winter months for its UVB rays to penetrate the atmosphere.

If your shadow is longer than you are tall, you arent making vitamin D, even if you go out and sunbathe on a sunny January day, Linge explains.

There are also folks that need to avoid sun exposure for medical reasons, as well as people who spend most of the day inside and arent able to get their daily sun allotment.

In these situations, Linge says taking a vitamin D supplement year-round can help ensure youre staying topped up on the sunshine vitamin. Talk with your doctor to see how much you should take.

Vitamin A And Carotenoids

Vitamin A is crucial for our bodies, and it does a lot more than help our peepers. Vitamin A supports a healthy immune system, reproductive system, cell health, and vision. Because vitamin A helps produce healthy cells, it also affects our vital organs like the heart and lungs. Some research has even linked taking vitamin A with improving measles and some types of cancer.

Vitamin A comes in two forms, and we need to get them both from our diets. First there is provitamin A, which is found in darkly-colored fruits and vegetables like carrots, broccoli, cantaloupe, and squash. Once we eat those fruits and vegetables, our bodies convert the provitamin A into vitamin A that our tissues can use. The most important type of provitamin A carotenoid is beta-carotene. The second type is preformed vitamin A, which is found in animal sources like dairy, fish, and meat. We can also get carotenoids from supplements, liver and fish oils, as well as palm oil, algae, and fungi. Mmm one order of algae and fungi to go please!

Most multivitamins contain vitamin A, and women should aim for about 770 micrograms of vitamin A per day.

Also Check: How To Tell Which Vitamins You Are Lacking

Sometimes Supplements Are Needed

Supplements do have a role to play for some groups of people. For instance, people on long-term restrictive weight loss diets or people with malabsorption problems, such as diarrhoea, coeliac disease, cystic fibrosis or pancreatitis, can benefit from supplements.

Folic acid supplements are strongly recommended for women planning a pregnancy to reduce the risk having a baby with neural tube defects, like spina bifida. Also, people who follow vegan diets, especially if pregnant, may benefit from vitamin B12 supplements.

People who are advised by their doctor that they need to take vitamin supplements are encouraged to consult an accredited dietitian, who can work with their doctor to provide dietary advice related to the persons situation.

If you need to take a supplement, it is best to take multivitamins at the recommended dietary level, rather than single nutrient supplements or high-dose multivitamins.

Most Vitamin Pills Are Useless But Here Are The Ones You Should Take

It seems like simple, obvious advice: eat your vegetables, get some exercise, and – of course – take your vitamins. Or not.

In fact, recent studies skew in the opposite direction, having found that certain vitamins may be bad for you.

And a large new study out Wednesday suggests that despite this growing knowledge, Americans’ pill-popping habits have stayed basically the same over the last decade.

So here are the vitamins and supplements you should take – and the ones you should avoid:

Multivitamins: Skip them – you can get everything you need with a balanced diet.

For decades, it was assumed that multivitamins were critical to overall health. Vitamin C to “boost your immune system”, Vitamin A to protect your vision, Vitamin B to keep you energized.

Not only do you already get these ingredients from the food you eat, but studies suggest that consuming them in excess can actually cause harm.

A large 2011 study of close to 39,000 older women over 25 years found that women who took them in the long term actually had a higher overall risk of death than those who did not.

Vitamin D: Take it – it helps keep your bones strong and it’s hard to get from food.

Vitamin D isn’t present in most of the foods we eat, but it’s a critical ingredient that keeps our bones strong by helping us absorb calcium.

Antioxidants: Skip them – an excess of these has been linked to an increased risk of certain cancers, and you can eat berries instead.

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Is It Good To Take A Multivitamin Every Day

Experts are at odds over the effectiveness of multivitamins. While some think they supply missing nutrients, others say theyre nothing more than an expensive crutch.

Internist Raul Seballos, MD, notes that two large studies have finally shed some light on the subject:

• The Physicians Health Study II: Tracked multivitamin use in 14,500 male physicians, aged 50 and above, over an 11-year period.
• The Iowa Womens Health study: Tracked multivitamin and supplement use in 38,772 women over an 18-year period. The average age at the studys start was 61.

Dr. Seballos says these studies found that: