Wellness Myths

Do You Need a Multivitamin?

August 18, 2021 Emily Rae and Vanessa Schiffelbine Season 2 Episode 22
Wellness Myths
Do You Need a Multivitamin?
Show Notes Transcript

The world of supplements is like the Wild West. You’ve got no idea which brand to pick, which ingredients are best, and if more expensive means higher quality. Well, the girls of Wellness Myths are here to answer your questions!

This episode will delve into the regulation (or lack thereof) of supplements, who really needs a multivitamin, and how to select vitamins that will fit your needs. You’ll also hear all about Emily and Vanessa’s supplement regimens, nutrients of concern, and even a few more facts about caffeine (catch last week’s episode for more!)

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You can find a computer generated show transcript at https://wellnessmyths.com

Emily:

Paint us.

Vanessa:

Hey, em,

Emily:

So it's kind of funny. I know this is like old news because this was our topic last week, but I'm heading into those really caffeinated up for this episode.

Vanessa:

you know what? I think I saw a Snapchat of you drinking coffee. I just saw it. You sent it to me.

Emily:

Yeah. You're like, I just saw it now. It was like, well, I was really excited.

Vanessa:

I'm not caffeinated, but, so when I first popped on this, I was feeling a little drained and mind you we've only been on this for like 15 minutes, but I was feeling a little drained. I literally like left my work desk and came in directly into my closet.

Emily:

To record. I feel like you have to explain, like now I'm just sitting in my closet and you're like, why for your audio listening? Pleasure.

Vanessa:

exactly, and, but I had some electrolytes and I had a couple of veggie chips and now I'm feeling pretty great.

Emily:

Wow. Well, it's a good thing. You had your veggie chips because maybe that had all your vitamins in it and you don't need to take your multivitamin anymore. Okay. Let's talk all about supplements. I'm ready to go.

Vanessa:

Okay, let's do it. Welcome to wellness myths today, we're talking about multivitamins. So multivitamins are a supplement that are super, super popular. From what I saw, they accounted for 40% of all dietary supplement sales. That was in 2014. And honestly, I would say I would think that would be even higher now in 2021, especially with the pandemic, I can see people just kind of like, throwing down some multivitamins for an extra insurance policy.

Emily:

Yeah. I'm, I'm kinda surprised that it's 40%, but then I think like that's probably more due to like my own bubble of like knowing people who take like 12,000 supplements, but a lot of people are used to taking just a multivitamin every day, either at direction from their doctor or some really nice marketing that's been done for them.

Vanessa:

Yeah. And multivitamins have been around for a really long time. So they first hit the market in the early 1940s.

Emily:

Oh, wow. I

Vanessa:

they're definitely not in it.

Emily:

yeah, that's crazy.

Vanessa:

So, do you want to talk a little bit about multivitamins and general? Like what the, what, what we mean when we say multivite.

Emily:

Yeah, so multivitamins can contain a variety of different nutrients and usually there's no actual standard for multivitamins that they have to have X, Y, and Z.

Vanessa:

Yeah. And that's a really important point too, because like Emily said, they don't have to have anything in them. In particular they're just multivitamins Well, vitamins doesn't matter what they are. So as soon as you hear that, you should be thinking Not all multivitamins are created equal cause they're all going to be a little bit different.

Emily:

And every person is really different. And so it's like one of, I feel like our listeners will know it's like a red flag. Right. They can't like prescribe everybody the same multivitamin, but these brands will definitely have you thinking like this works for like you, your friend, your partner, all the same people. I know. There's like some delineation, like women's and men's and stuff like that. Or like for children, for example, obviously needs, can vary a little bit there, but a lot of them are just general supplements. And like Vanessa said, there's no standard. And I think it's really important before we even get any deeper to just talk about the safety of supplements in general. But of course this, that includes all multivitamins. The FDA is not authorized to review supplements for safety and effectiveness before they're on the market. So basically it's just like if the supplement contains a new ingredient, then you know, the manufacturer has to talk to the FDA and be like, okay, you know, here you go. We're going to use this new type of. Ingredient in our supplement and the notification is reviewed by the FDA and only for safety, not for effectiveness. So pretty much that's why all of your supplements say like, you know, this is not meant to be used in place of a pharmaceutical drug because the FDA just doesn't deal with it. Even if like, there are proven benefits of a supplement, there's a lot of regulation that goes behind. Not quite allowing them to make that statement because nobody's really checking them.

Vanessa:

Right. And it's really important to remember too. You want to be careful. This is where going with reputable brands and also, well, even more than relative well, brands, brands that have some kind of third party. Elation or auditors because it's kind of like the wild, wild west. If they're not being audited by a third party, they could potentially not even have the things they're saying they have in their supplement, in their supple then. Cause nobody's tracking.

Emily:

absolutely. And there's nobody to hold them accountable and I find it like kind of ironic in this age of Anti-vaccine for the COVID vaccine where they're like, well, it's not even FDA approved. That's kind of a lot of people's reasoning behind not getting the vaccine. And the fact is that all of these natural supplements that a lot of the times, the same people are really interested in and using on a daily basis are also not approved or really gone through any sort of regulatory body. And there's a couple of things though, that you can look out for to see if your vitamin. Has gone through a little bit more rigorous of testing. And one of those things is a GMP label, a good manufacturing practice label. And basically that just means that they are. Following all of these guidelines to ensure that they don't contain contaminants or impurities and they're accurately labeled. And then there's also the USP verified mark on a supplement. And that basically just means that the supplement that you're getting contains the ingredients listed on the label, in the exact potency and amounts that. They claim because tests have shown that a lot of supplements don't match the label and they can contain significantly less or significantly more than the claimed amount of ingredients. And so if you see it as USP label, then it kind of helps customers understand they're getting exactly what they think they're purchasing.

Vanessa:

And that can be really, really dangerous. Not having the amount they're saying they have in them. I think a lot of people think of vitamins or supplements and think, oh, it's natural. It's not a big deal. Or they think, oh, if it's too much, I'll just pee it out. Which is true for our water soluble vitamins, but not our fat-soluble those aren't, you're not just going to pee them out. It's important to look for those labels to ensure that you're taking what you think you're doing.

Emily:

Yeah. And even that USP seal also can guarantee that there's no harmful levels of heavy metals, like lead or mercury pesticides or other contaminants. And it's also. Guaranteeing that your supplement will break down and release into the body within a specific specified amount of time. You know, something that we have to think about is, yeah, you can take the supplement, but if it doesn't break down properly to allow its ingredients to be absorbed by the body, then you're not really getting any of the benefits. And USP seal also covers the good manufacturing practices. So that basically if you see USP, it means they're also using that GMP seal as well. And that's basically about safety and sanitary and all these processes that indicate that the manufacturer is conscious of quality.

Vanessa:

So if you take nothing else away from this podcast, please just remember USP and GM. So next time in a year in the supplement aisle, USP, GMP, and I'll add the cob caveat to that is I don't necessarily think people should just blindly be picking out supplements by themselves. But if you are going to do that, look for those labels.

Emily:

absolutely.

Vanessa:

I also wanted to mention while we're talking about safety, I mean, so, you know, in college, whatever, we talked about, this kind of thing a lot, and I don't know if you remember this Emily, but I remember watching, I don't know if it was like a documentary or something and it was about supplements and this lady. Build this like huge supplement company. I think it was a lady and she was just like throwing stuff together in her kitchen.

Emily:

Oh, yeah, I very vaguely, vaguely remember that.

Vanessa:

Yeah, So it kind of goes to show you how, like, someone could literally just be like encapsulating things in their kitchen and sending it out. And it could end up on a shelf somewhere. And I mean, they could be putting literally, not even anything close to what they're saying on the bottle in that cap.

Emily:

Yeah, and we all know how much misinformation is out there regarding wellness and health in general. And so it's like it's kind of bound to happen with supplements too.

Vanessa:

They can make claims to pretty much anything, like if you're saying supports immune health as long as they're not saying that it's going to. Cure you of anything or making like a hard claim like that they can use supports whatever on their on their labels. It doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

Emily:

Totally.

Vanessa:

And speaking of true things or not true things, I think maybe we should get into whether a multivitamin is actually helpful and kind of the science behind. So I wanted to start this off by kind of saying, well, first of all, the Mo the science behind multivitamins is pretty inconclusive. So sorry for that. If you wanted a definitive answer, but. I mean studies aren't really showing that multivitamins are harmful. They're not showing that they're helpful. They're not really showing much at all. Like I said, they're inconclusive, but what I would like you to take away from this is also most of the studies are being done pretty short term and they're measuring very specific risk. Risks related to multivitamins. So there, you know, measuring, if it's decreasing mortality, cardiovascular disease, stroke other major health events like cancer. And of course, I mean, all of us want to prevent those things. And I think we try to do that all the time, but I don't know, are those the only things we necessarily care about when taking a multivitamin? I feel like a lot of times people are more interested in maybe immune health or feeling better if they are having some inadequacies in their diet. So I think that's kind of an interesting thing too, and something we definitely need more research on because those. I guess the things that we're looking at are kind of extreme and again done in mostly the short term. So it's kind of hard to say, you know, unless we have like a 40 year long study of people taking a multivitamin It's kind of hard to say, is it going to help with cardiovascular disease or not? And you're also looking at the person in particular which do they have a risk for cardiovascular disease in their family? You know, what are their other lifestyle factors? So it's really hard to pin those big things on one thing.

Emily:

And also because multivitamins are so varied across the board. You can't really make any blanket statements about that because they're so different. And also what vitamin might be really helpful for a person, like say, you know, there's two people with deficiencies and then one starts taking the multivitamin and the deficiencies get better. And then the other person starts taking it. It doesn't, well, it might not really point to the multivitamin not working. You might have an absorption issue and no matter how much of that vitamin that you ingest, it's not going to make a difference.

Vanessa:

Right. So there is a ton of factors at play there. And knowing that, you know, studies are kind of inconclusive and we don't have a defined answer for everyone for research that says everyone should take a multivitamin or everyone shouldn't take a multivitamin. So, let's talk a little bit about our professional opinions on multivitamins. So I'm you Ana, you want to go.

Emily:

So the dietary guidelines for Americans releases something called the nutrients of concern every five years. And most recently it was dietary fiber, vitamin D calcium and potassium. So basically they took a look at people's diets and realized that these are the nutrients that we're not really getting enough of in our daily meals. So you might notice. Nutrients are more commonly labeled on nutrition facts, because we're trying to kind of draw attention to folks like, Hey, this has a lot of your calcium in it. This is a lot of your vitamin D. And so those are the most common nutrients and those things like, you know, dietary fiber, isn't going to be in a multivitamin unless you're taking like a fiber supplement, but that will be separate. And so a lot of those things are really easy to get in your diet. And so, you know, if it comes to that and you think that your also getting an insufficient amount of those nutrients a lot of multivitamins will have things like vitamin D calcium and potassium in them, but could you be getting them from food in a really simple, straightforward way, maybe depends on your access to food and a variety of different fruits and vegetables.

Vanessa:

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So, you know, as dieticians, especially, we're always looking at things, food first, so in a perfect world where you're eating. A perfect diet. And when I say perfect diet, I just mean you're getting all of the nutrients that you need every day. So that involves eating a variety of foods and eating a variety of nutrient dense foods. So, if you are doing that every day, you probably don't need a multivitamin. I think the reality is that a lot of people don't do that every day. And I think that's for a variety of different reasons, right? It can be because some people are pickier eaters. Some people don't have access to a variety of foods. Some people have. Super busy lives where they're, you know, not prioritizing that necessarily. So they're not getting a variety. So that's kind of, in my mind where a multivitamin can come in and probably should come in. And those cases, like I said, we would love in a perfect world where everyone was just getting everything that they needed from their diet. But at the end of the day, we know that not everyone does.

Emily:

Totally. And there are definitely situations where almost like, you know, everyone will be really excited because we kind of can never like give just a generalized piece of advice. And I feel like that's like, what's about to come out of my mouth, but You know, if you're following a plant-based diet or a vegan diet, you definitely need a B12 supplement. Like that's a non-negotiable there's two types of B12, methylcobalamin and cyanocobalamin. And the current research is saying that cyanocobalamin is easier too, for the body to absorb. So you definitely want to look for that cyan over variation over the methyl. And then even for me, like, I think a D three, for sure, especially in pandemic times with immunity and a lot of studies showing that people with adequate vitamin D have been shown to have more positive COVID related outcomes. Which I know everybody was going to love that and wants to have enough vitamin D for even just that reason alone. And we know sun exposure can help. Risks of skin cancers. So this is kind of like a riskless way to make sure you get enough vitamin D in your diet and protect your skin. And that way it kind of takes the guesswork out of like, oh, like how much sunlight exposure do I need to really make this? And, you know, we can just supplement and skip that whole worry and you can still wear sunscreen. To me, it's like you could select a vitamin multivitamin that has both of those things included, or you could just take like one supplement for each and maybe, you know, you don't need a multivitamin with all those extra things. So I think it then kind of goes down to like, what are your individual needs? And could that be better met through like specific targeted supplements or a multivitamin.

Vanessa:

For sure. It's important to think about those things. I saw it. Someone I was reading up about multivitamins and another dietician talked about multivitamins as like an insurance policy. And for like people with really busy schedules or, you know, that no, they're not eating super nutrient dense all the time. And I thought that was kind of a good way to put it. It is, it is like an insurance policy at the end of the day, a multivitamin is not going to replace your. Insufficient diet. So you can't just, you know, not eat anything or not eat variety and take a multivitamin think you're going to be Okay. Of course, like we said you know, if I was working with someone who was a super picky eater and didn't eat very much variety at all, I would absolutely probably suggest a multivitamin and that scenario, but I would also be working with them to increase their food options. So it's not like. You know, a bandaid. Yeah.

Emily:

Totally. And if you do take a multi-level in which if you listen to our episode on caffeine, you'll already know this fact and you can be like, I know exactly what I was going to say next, but you definitely want to avoid taking your multivitamin right? When you take your coffee in the morning or tea. Just because that can inhibit the absorption. Yeah. Once again, if you're taking a vitamin, you want to be sure that you're able to uptake as much of the vitamin that's in your supplement. And then taking it with food can be helpful too, because other ingredients in food like fats can help you absorb vitamins a b E and K.

Vanessa:

Yeah. And also with, you know, thinking of taking them with food, cause sometimes taking a multivitamin or any supplement on an empty stomach can make you feel kind of sick too. So I don't necessarily suggest that also important to just talk to someone about what kind of multivitamin that you need. Like we said, there's no standard to multivitamins, so it's definitely a good idea to go in with some guidance versus just blindly going in. If you are blindly going in though, looking for that USP and GMP label. And I guess before you go in and looking for a multivitamin at all you know, Yes, your lifestyle and eating habits, you know, are you eating green, leafy vegetables every day? Are you getting fresh fruit, whole grains fiber? Like we said, there's not necessarily always fiber in in multivitamins, but a lot of those fiber foods have, you know, B, B vitamins and other vitamins you'd find in a multimedia. So, you know, assess your diet and look, are you getting a lot of variety? Are you getting lots of fruits and veggies every day? And if you are, you know, then it might not be necessary.

Emily:

for sure. So all that aside, do you take a multivite.

Vanessa:

So I always have a multivitamin in my cupboard, And honestly, I go in spurts of taking it and not taking it. And it kind of depends on my diet and what's going on with me. If I feel like I'm sometimes even like, if I'm going on a trip or something, and I know that my diet might have less variety than usual. Pop of multivitamin for a few days while I'm gone. Or I'll sometimes pop it. If I feel like I'm getting sick or something like that for just some extra added support, but it's definitely not something that I take religiously.

Emily:

And are there any supplements that you take religion?

Vanessa:

Wow. I do take a magnesium supplement religiously and I take an ashwagandha somewhat religiously. And vitamin D but not during the summer.

Emily:

Right. You're outside a lot.

Vanessa:

Yeah. What supplements are you taking?

Emily:

Yeah, I do not take a multivitamin personally. I actually never have. I think it's because like being vegan, I really had to think like, okay, I need this B12 supplement. I always take a D three as well. Same as Vanessa. So I think I just like always assumed, like that was all I needed. I do feel like I get a wide variety of foods. I mean, as per Vanessa's guidance, I take magnesium and an omega supplement for hormone support and along with my vitamin B12 and B3, and then I take another gummy vitamin that has Bitex in it also for hormone support. So I kind of go the route of like, I'm going to look at really what I need in an individual basis at this time. And if something else were to come up, if I had a deficiency or something like that, I would probably select a multivitamin, but it doesn't feel necessary at this time. I'd rather go with more of a targeted supplement regimen.

Vanessa:

And I think that's usually, I mean, I would say that's kind of the gold standard, just going with the targeted because. You can usually get a higher quality of whatever individual nutrients that you need. But you know, there, there's a time in place for multivitamins.