Do you take a multivitamin? Do you believe that it is improving your health? Do you think it will prevent diseases or enhance your body’s functioning? If you said yes, you are not alone. Millions of Americans swear by their daily multivitamin. What if we told you that you don’t need it and that it might be harming your health? Here’s why.
Vitamin and mineral deficiency is a serious problem in some third-world countries. Deficiency based diseases can cause serious illnesses and in some cases be fatal. In those places, a multivitamin will help prevent these problems.
However, in most Western countries, including the United States where people eat a variety foods daily, a multivitamin is not needed. Deficiency based diseases are incredibly rare, even among the poor.
There are a couple of exceptions to this, though. In places where the sun doesn’t shine that much, a vitamin D supplement might be needed. Those of us suffering from macular degeneration would certainly benefit from a antioxidant supplement. But the rest of us do not need to supplement our diets. In fact, we may be doing more harm than good.
One danger of taking a multivitamin is overdosing on certain vitamins and minerals. this is especially the case if you take a single vitamin supplement like vitamin E. Multivitamins tend to match more of a daily dose. But if you’re already eating a healthy diet full of fresh vegetables and fruit, adding a multivitamin could be quite harmful.
For example, too much vitamin E can increase mortality rates. Too much beta-carotene can also cause adverse health reactions including mortality.
Vitamins and minerals are essential nutrients that we have to have in order to avoid deficiency diseases. But having more vitamins and minerals than what we need does not provide any health benefit.
When it comes to our body, it benefits the most from dietary variety. It’s not a good idea to eat the same foods every single day even if they are healthy foods. You should mix it up. The reason for this is our body has to make enzymes in order to break down foods. If you eat the exact same foods every single day, your body can forget how to make enzymes to break down other foods and not be able to extract the vitamins and minerals from those foods that it needs.
If you take a multi-vitamin in the exact same doses every single day, your body can get lazy and not remember how to produce the enzymes to break down the really good salad you just ate.
In the long run, taking a multivitamin plus eating a healthy diet might actually result in your body not getting the variety of vitamins and minerals that it needs!
Our advice is to ditch the multivitamin. Unless you are under doctor’s orders to supplement your diet with a specific vitamin due to some deficiency you are facing, it is much better just to rely on a balanced diet.
