ELI5- can I rely only on drug store vitemens and supplements to give me the benefits my body needs?

821 views

ELI5- can I rely only on drug store vitemens and supplements to give me the benefits my body needs?

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes and No.

If you have a deficiency, you should take a supplement.

That being said, most supplements contain WAAAAY more nutrients than your body can actually process. Those multi-vitamins you see that say “6,000% of your vitamin C daily allowance” are a gimmick. Your body cannot process that much Vitamin C and the majority of it will be discarded via your urine.

I would consult a doctor, or a certified dietitian and see just what your body needs and the best way to introduce it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

No. The human body only needs relatively small amounts of vitamin so you will only get any health benefits from those vitamins if your diet is lacking.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Graduate degree in nutrition plus 3rd year medical student. The answer is no. First of all, you only need supplements if your diet is lacking or if you have a genetic disorder that makes it harder to process certain nutrients (like a deficiency in Intrinsic factor which is needed to absorb vitamin B12).

That said, vitamins and micronutrients in supplements are NOT the same as their food counterparts. You can extract something like Vitamin E and put it in a pill but the evidence is compelling that these things dont always work perfectly on their own. There are other substances in food that work with these vitamins to make them more effective.

Also, supplement forms can also carry risks. Excessive doses of supplemental vitamin E shows risk for cardiovascular disease in women while vitamin E in food does not show the same risk. Similarly high calcium supplements for men showed signs of increased prostate cancer but not when obtained in food (these studies were back in 2010 so there may have been updates since then).

Lastly, your body cant use all the extra nutrients but cancerous growths can. If you have an existing growth that you dont know about you can accelerate its development by pumping it full of the extra vitamins etc.

So general rule, you should only supplement if your doctor tells you you need to and or if your diet is severely lacking. That said, its not a perfect fix and you should always attempt to gain micronutrients from food first.