Healthy people generally don't need them but suffice to say taking a multivitamin won't make you "healthier" it just makes you normal.

For instance someone who works night shifts will commonly have a vitamin D deficiency (from not being in the sun as much), taking said vitamin will normalize them and keep them healthy.

As you get older you also generally eat less or have digestive issues, so you absorb less from food so a multivitamin often becomes needed.

In short, only so many vitamins your body needs; having more than what you need rarely makes you healthier but it can help you prepare for cases where you might use more.

Ie. Those whom exercise will generally have less salts in their body from sweating (magnesium, potassium, sodium) and drinking more frequently. So you'll either use supplements or start to increase your meal sizes.

Blood work will easily reveal any deficiencies, no need to speculate.

Vitamins in their raw form aren't necessarily absorbed properly by the body. They often need to be "bundled" with appropriate fats, proteins, carbohydrates, or other vitamins in order to have the optimal effect.

Also, if you're taking vitamins in lieu of eating foods that are high in vitamins, you're missing out on other important nutrients, especially dietary fiber, which has a lot of positive effects on overall health.

I agree 100% with the others, however I would like to make an important side note/exception about taking vitamins. PSA here, if you or anyone you know are alcoholics, please take vitamin B1 (Thiamine) supplements. Don't trust me, seriously don't, ask your doctor and do some research.

>I'm under the impression that you get enough (or more) of all the needed vitamins and minerals when you take daily vitamins, and you don't if you just rely on your diet

This is like, the exact opposite of what's true. Most people get all of their essential vitamins and minerals from just eating a healthy, balanced diet (assuming they actual eat that). Taking supplements on top of that doesn't do anything. Your body can only use so many vitamins at a time. Taking more is just like pouring water into an already full cup - it's a waste. In some cases, you can actually overdose on certain vitamins. There's very little scientific evidence that vitamins or supplements do anything in people who eat healthy balanced diet because, as previously stated, those people are already getting all the vitamins they need and all the vitamins their bodies are capable of utilizing.

Edit: To be clear, people can certainly have deficiencies in various vitamins and minerals for various reasons, and for those people, supplements that contain the vitamins or minerals that they're deficient in *are* helpful and even necessary. It's healthy people who are already getting all the necessary vitamins and minerals from food that don't benefit from supplements.

(multi)Vitamins will only ever patch a hole in a deficiency or flaw in your lifestyle. If you are healthy, vitamins will not make you healthier. If you have unhealthy circumstances in your diet or lifestyle, vitamins may help correct for them (but generally not as well as correcting those unhealthy circumstances)

A person who takes daily vitamins tends to have other health issues that would cause them to need to take those vitamers.

For people in first world countries with access to plentiful and varied high-quality foods, vitamin supplements are typically not needed. All of the necessary vitamins are found in the food, and once you're getting enough, more of them doesn't appreciably make you healthier. There are certainly exceptions, where some people need particular supplements for one reason or another.

For anyone who can't get enough food, or enough variety of food, vitamin supplements absolutely do make a huge health difference.

Statistically, people who have existing health issues are more likely to take vitamins than those who don't. Average Joe who feels ok doesn't bother taking vitamins.

Because most people DO get plenty of vitamins from their diet. Only in rare cases do vitamin supplements actually help. Vitamins are much better absorbed by your body when they come from food, and a vitamin deficiency with an otherwise balanced diet is usually indicative of a health issue.

Vitamin D is the one exception: we don't get it from our diet, and most people don't have enough due to a lack of sun exposure.

For the most part, a halfway decent diet will get you enough vitamins to be healthy enough. Another thing about vitamins is that after you reach a threshold of how much is necessary for bodily functions, any more is really just unnecessary and provides mostly minor benefit. Daily multivitamins are really only necessary if your normal diet is deficient in nutritional value.

Other factors to consider include that supplements usually contain forms of vitamins that aren't easily absorbed and will therefore be in excess, and your body already pretty readily excretes the excess stuff (that's why if you drink an energy drink with B vitamins your pee will be kinda neon; that's the excess B2 being excreted pretty much right away). Now, fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E,K) aren't as easily excreted as the water soluble ones, which means that excess supplementation can lead to them building to toxic levels (but that's pretty hard to do unless you're just eating vitamins like candy).

Some vitamins should be supplemented in certain scenarios. B9 (folic acid) is supplemented in pregnant women to prevent spina bifida in the newborn child. Vegans can end up with low B12 since it's usually found in higher levels in animal products like meat, eggs, or milk (low B12 can cause fatigue/anemia which is why it's included in energy drinks). People that are inside all the time can end up with low Vitamin D (although this can be deslt with via diet sometimes), so people in areas with less sunlight and work indoors may need to supplement (Vitamin D deficiency is pretty common in Michigan for example). Older adults can also lose the ability to absorb vitamins as easily with age, so they may need multivitamins. There may be others but that's what comes to mind rn.

Outside of certain scenarios, it's highly unlikely that most people with consistent access to food need to supplement. I personally take Vitamin D supplements because I usually spend most of the day every day indoors while being in one of those area with less sunlight (and my blood work showed that it was low when I went for my annual checkup). Anything else would be entirely extraneous for me.

Define healthy... or healthier!

Health is so complex, you can't really describe it as you are either healthy or not.

\---

Vitamins are only a part of a healthy diet. Having too little of them causes problems, having too much of them causing problems. So your body is smart enough that it only takes what it needs. You can eath mega dose of Vitamin C, you are gonna just pee out hte excess or put undue hardship to your kidneys

IF you have some deficiency, taking daily vitamin supplements is gonna "make you healthier" by masking the deficiency, but will not solve the underlying cause.

But if you are already on a healthy diet and you eat everything that your body need, taking vitamin supplements not gonna give you any benefit.

A lot of people are saying taking vitamins is unnecessary as long as you eat a healthy balanced diet, whish is true, but most people don't eat a healthy balanced diet.

That's because the human diet has never been so vitamin rich. Obesity crisis aside, we have never had such rich and plentiful nutrition and we can actually survive pretty well on far less. The vast majority of people do not in any way need to take vitamin supplements. The body can operate perfectly fine within a range of vitamin values. Like most things in biology (which is based on chemistry) all the things your body needs have an optimum level and too much is either excreted or can actually become poisonous. This baby brained idea that "vitamins are good for you therefore more is always better" is just not true when it comes to health. Sadly the supplement industry spends a lot of time spreading propaganda about this stuff so many people waste thousands a year on unneccesary supplements.

Because getting too much of something that your body needs doesn't help, and can sometimes be very bad for you. Water is essential to your bodies survival, but too much water in your body will still kill you, for example. With vitamins and minerals in most cases it won't hurt you, it will just be ejected in your urine, so taking several times your daily allowance of something does nothing to help your body

Because vitamins are mostly unnecessary.

The only time you really NEED to take a vitamin is if your doctor diagnoses you with a certain vitamin deficiency. In that case they’ll obviously prescribe you to take whatever vitamin you have a deficiency in.

If you eat any sort of balanced, healthy diet, you’ll get all the vitamins your body needs from your food.

Plenty of good answers:

vast majority of people don't need vitamin supplements with exception of vit D. And if you need supplements they should not come in form of all in one over the counter pills, but doctor prescribed doses of vitamins you need.

Studies have shown that people who take vitamin supplements long term (many years) actually are generally less healthy and live shorter - which could be connected to lifestyle choices and many other factors but it's an interesting observation anyway.

Most answers are correct. To expand/rephrase, taking multivitamins is, as a general rule, unhealthy. Since most vitamins are naturally supplied in your daily food and drink intake, the multivitamin will likely have no effect or cause an overdose of certain vitamin. The only time you should take a vitamin is when you don't get enough of it in your daily food and drink intake. You would likely be better off just adding in one piece of food into your diet over taking a pill.

While your doctor can help with lots of medical advice and order tests, you need to speak with a dietician about this.

I would also like to define a couple terms. Diet is defined as what you eat and drink. Healthy diet is when your diet provides all the nutrients your body needs without exceeding or lacking in certain areas

Most vitamins taken orally are simply pissed away down the toilet. Unless you have a poor diet or a deficiency for some other reason they are a waste of time and money. Huge scam.

This question is making a false assumption, that being that people just arbitrarily take vitamins. Sure, some people do, and probably buy shitty grocery store cheap ones. However, the majority of customers at the health food store that I own purchase vitamins as "supplements". That is to say, they are supplementing a deficiency. For example vegans often need to supplement iron. Or pregnant women need to supplement their intake of specific nutrients to ensure the baby doesn't have any deficiencies. Or someone who is feeling consistent anxiety may be low in B vitamins and so they supplement that.

This may be due to a temporary deficiency or it may be chronic, or even genetic, or physiological (I personally have a harder time than most uptaking certain B's, so I supplement in higher doses as per my practitioners guidance).

So I believe the correct answer is (assuming they're taking the right supplement): they ARE healthier than an identical person in their situation who does not take supplements.

Because you don't need them if you're heating healthy enough and taking them while eating like shit is not enough to be healthy. So there's no scenario in which you get healthier that normal with vitamins.

Your questions can’t be answered because it’s based on false assumptions. As someone with an autoimmune disease who relies on vitamins due to my body’s struggle to absorb them properly from the foods I eat, I can tell you that taking vitamins separately makes a dramatic difference to my daily wellbeing.

You're hiding a non proved fact within your question. Can you provide any source to your statement "people that take daily vitamins are not way healthier than those who don't"?

Otherwise your question is biased so you won't get good answers.

Do you have evidence that people taking vitamin supplements are not healthier?

for 99% of people taking vitamin pills they're doing more harm than good. unless your doctor specifically prescribes them do not take them. a very slightly varied diet already easily gives you all the nutrients you need.

As I understand it, a lot of food in the developed world is enriched/fortified, so that the average person gets enough vitamins.

Vitamins are like cats, a cat or two (adequate vitamin levels) will make you happy (healthy). But there are diminishing returns on happiness (healthiness) if you have 20 cats.

People who superdose vitamins just end up creating very nutritious pee and poop. Some vitamins can also harm you if you take too much (vitamin K causes liver toxicity).

As long as you have normal levels of vitamins/minerals and get a balanced diet, you don't need supplements.

I mean, curing deficiencies will make you objectively healthier. But I think for some people, multivitamins allow them to have a poor diet because they assume the vitamins will cover the rest. But in reality, certain nutrients need to be ingested separately for highest absorption.

There is a set amount of vitamins your body can absorb. If your body receives more than this set amount, the body will get rid of it via bodily waste.

So, if a cup can hold 500 ml of liquid, adding 1 litre will result in 500 ml being held and the other 500 ml being wasted.

>I'm under the impression that you get enough (or more) of all the needed vitamins and minerals when you take daily vitamins, and you don't if you just rely on your diet

What crazy train have you been riding? I'm almost 50, last year I had a stomach issue and was hospitalized for 2 days. After I got blood tests that tested for over 30 vitamins and minerals. I was deficient in potassium (which is really freaking important!). So I got PRESCRIBED potassium pills for a week. But I went back to my normal diet after a week they said I was fine (edit: after a 2nd blood test), cause a lot of foods I eat are high in potassium. But everything else in that 30 something list was fine just from normal diet.

2nd edit stray "4" as I use a gaming mouse and sometimes hit the buttons not meaning to moving the mouse.

Statistics say that people who Supplement vitamins are healthier, but this is most likely a spurious correlation and there is no causality. It is more likely explained to the fact that people who Take extra vitamins are more concerned about their health on average. They make more Sports, eat better and avoid unhealthy behaviour.

Vitamins do not t make you healthier, they ensure your body can operate efficiently. You supplement to avoid deficiency.

So I supplement with vitamin D because I live in a Northern space with low sunlight levels during the winter. If I don't I will become depressed, anxious, fatigued, and I will start catching more colds.

Having enough vitamins just makes you "normal".

Vitamins are valuable to women in general and especially after menopause. Women just don't get enough iron, potassium and magnesium in the modern diet, and all of these and the B vitamins can make a big difference to menopause symptoms, which can be horrific.


It's important to add collagen supplements as well, for healthy skin and vein-cell structure, for soft tissue mobility & flexibility. Collagen can definitely reduce fine wrinkles (stay out of the sun though, ladies). It makes a big difference in that fine bruising that can happen on the hands and arms, because it strengthens cell structure, along with B6 & B12. Of course vitamins C & D help as well.


It's not always easy to get allll these additional magic vitamins into an edible, healthy, sustainable diet. Sometimes, it's perfectly fine to adapt a good, all around multi-vitamin into the mix so that you can actually enjoy that cheeseburger or pizza or salad. We can't eat as much as we get older, because our metabolism slows down, so use the work-arounds to stay slim and healthier.


**Always really read** the back of the multi-vitamin bottles to be sure you're getting the RDA amounts you need. Some of them are trifling and you want as close to 100% of the RDA as you can get, if not in excess.

Malnutrition is almost exterminated in developed countries. You aren't going to see people with scurvy or kwashiorkor (when starving children's stomachs swell. Had to look that one up) in your daily life. Even as awful as the average western diet can be, even if you binge fast food, you're still getting *most* of what your body needs.

The little symptoms that vitamin pills can potentially solve are invisible. You can't really notice someone getting 10% less headaches or experiencing less water retention. It might change their world, but it's just not that visible to a stranger.

It's tangentially related to invisible illnesses.

Also, that's assuming we're strictly talking about people who make informed choices about dietary supplements. A large amount of the vitamin pill industry is outright fluff. Even when we're not talking about fake supplements, a lot of people take multivitamins they don't need, thanks to manipulative marketing. In those cases, you're not going to see a difference, because at best, there is none, and at worse, it could be making them sick.

Because they're just yet another scam like most other things that are sold today?

I think you also need to evaluate what your definition of "healthy" is. Taking vitamins can replace something that is lacking in your body. But replacing it just helps your body function. It doesn't get rid of any disease or condition a person might have.

I have low iron and b12. Taking those vitamins daily helps my red blood cells function better. But that doesn't fix the problem or make me "healthy."

Given that most doctors consider dietary supplements a scam, it's no wonder why. Unless you have a very unbalanced diet, most vitamins end up getting excreted from the body.

Apart from vitD 99,99% of the people get enough vitamins in their daily food. Vitamins dont make you healthier if you get more then you need.

Its like oil in a car. Without it it starts breaking apart, if you have enough things run fine. Oil doesnt help against flat tires and getting more and more oil doesnt make the car run smoother.

The, dont do anything, studies fail to prove vitamins like forever but everybody just keepa eating them...

A multivitamin is like a cheap insurance policy. If you eat an ideal diet It’s probably not necessary. It depends a lot on with the person eats.

Maybe same reason why Olympic athletes and the super health-and-fit types aren't living to 120 or any longer than your Keith Richards of this world. Its all about genetics baby!

Some people who take vitamin pills are healthier than they would be without them. Very few people are "way healthier" as opposed to "healthier". Many people are not healthier. If you take the wrong vitamins, you might be worse. Many other factors affect health and they are be more important. The differences due to vitamins, are small enough that you would need a scientific study to detect the differences.

Because vitamins and minerals work synergistically; wholistically, with one another, not separate from each other, the way "taking your vitamins" is designed.

Even in multi-vitamins, they're first separated before being stuffed into a single pill. That is NOT in it's natural whole-food form.

Zinc, Calcium, B12...this is completely absorbed in the bloodstream almost instantly and works with the biology of the human body in the form of Oysters and liver, for example, versus that same vitamins in pill form. In fact, in pill form, it's almost completly pissed or pooped out in waste. Very little is absorbed.

Supplements make sense only if you don't get it from your diet. if you have a good varied diet, you get all the vitamins and minerals you need from it and the supplements you take go towards making some very expensive urine.

How do you think our hunter gatherer ancestors survived without supplements?

How do you know they aren't?

Because taking most vitamins has been proven to not be any more effective than placebo for people with a normal diet.

Others have mentioned absorption issues. According to my dietician (I see her for an eating disorder) the vast majority of vitamins as produced here in the US aren’t in forms that are great for absorption, and we actually just excrete most of them back out. There are exceptions, like some forms of Vitamin D3. But, speaking for the US, we have pretty loose regulations on the claims that supplement producers are allowed to make and, unless your doctor specifically recommends a supplement, don’t bother.

Vitamins are, at best, a way to help you get certain nutrients that are more difficult to get naturally and, at worse, a waste of money that will do nothing for you. They do not do much in terms of changing health characteristics. So an unhealthy and healthy person will see a very small to negligible benefit to their bodies when taking s multi vitamin

1. Some people might be healthier due to vitamins, notably the population in general is low on Vitamin D but most people get by just fine (because we're not critically low). There are some outliers (people who don't react well to low levels of Vitamin D, non-optimal levels when breastfeeding etc), but in general people get by just fine.\*
2. A varied diet tends to cover most problems.
3. You're already getting a lot of vitamin/mineral enhanced food. Back when vitamins were discovered people actually had acute vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which led to things like Rickets, Beriberi, Goitre, Scurvy etc (feel free to google any of these deficiency diseases). Well. National health authorities did something about it (because a healthy population is an economic advantage). Which is why for example your milk is fortified with vitamin D (as are your eggs by giving hens vitamin D rich food), your salt with iodine, your cereals with vitamin A... It's also why lots of food commercials from the 1920s and onwards say "fortified with \[vitamin/mineral\]", as this was viewed as positive and there were people alive who knew how miserable actual vitamin/mineral deficiencies were.

\*A big exception to this is people who descend from an equatorial population and move to places without a lot of sun. So for example people who migrated from Morocco or Egypt and end up in Scandinavia/England/Canada probably do need to take Vitamin D supplements.

My grandmother had an eating disorder. She couldn't eat solid food. She would make herself half a sandwich for lunch, take three tiny bites, and claim she was "full". For the better part of 30 years, the majority of her daily caloric intake came from beer (600-900 calories/day).

Doctors tried everything to get some better nutrition into her, but in addition to her eating disorder, she was painfully stubborn. They tried getting her to take meal replacement supplements. She didn't like the texture. So they tried getting her to drink milkshakes. Still very poor for overall nutrition, but dense calories and better nutrition. She was too lazy to make the shakes. If my brother and I didn't make them, she didn't have them.

So that's a grown woman whose nutritional quality for her entire adult life was objectively trash, but she managed to survive until her late 40s before her body finally gave out.

The body can take a tremendous amount of abuse without showing overt signs of trauma. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not doing anything.

Because vitamin supplements only help if you have a vitamin deficiency. If you already have a balanced diet (and no condition that prevents the absorption of vitamins), then taking supplements only gives you expensive urine.

Because a lot of a good thing doesn't necessarily make you better. You only need a certain amount of each vitamin, and it isn't much. Anything more than that just comes out in your urine

Plus, there are a lot of other health issues that don't involve deficiencies. You can eat all the Flintstones Vitagummies I want, if your diet is nothing but cake everyday, or if you're a chronic alcoholic, your health isn't gonna improve

I take b12 and iron for anemia, and they make me healthier than I am without taking them. There are thousands of studies done on fish oil and it’s positive effects when taken. There are actually thousands of studies on lots of different vitamins and supplements. And then there are a bunch of useless supplements that are a waste of money.

Because multivitamins don’t actually work. Study after study has shown that there is no health benefit to taking vitamins and supplements. Google “do multivitamins work?”

The human body is really really good at Making Do.


Vitamins are good, but the difference between a person with everything they need and a person with just enough to get by is often subtle. Differences in quality of skin, hair and nails. Chronic headaches or reduced cognition are other indicators.


If you aren't getting enough calcium, your fingernails still grow, they just do so in a lower quality way with what I can only describe as "print lines" running along their length. They smooth out if you're getting what you need. That's about the most obvious one I can think of.

Scurvy is a famous one, lack of Vitamin C leading to bleeding gums and worse. That can be obvious but it's really hard to get to that point if you ever eat fruit of any kind. A minor deficiency is pretty hard to notice.

To the uneducated eye, there's not much difference between barely scraping by and excellence when it comes to vitamin deficiency.

Much of the stuff in a daily vitamin is immune support. I’ve noticed when I’m good about taking it semi-regularly I am sick less often and when I am sick it is not as bad.

To add to what others are saying, my brother was diagnosed with celiac a few years ago at 12 years old. After the diagnosis, he took multivitamins for 6 months as told by the doctor on top of stopping eating anything with gluten entirely. Suddenly he’s a few inches taller and physically is way healthier.

As many have said here. It’s often to patch a whole, not add to something that’s already good

Fair question but a difficult one given the vast number of variables. And in the end we're a bit like apples and oranges when it come to comparisons aren't we? That said we further complicate things by making two demands on vitamins. They are to prevent disease and promote wellness. While these might sound like flip sides of the same coin but their not. Consider Vitamin C-easy one-less than the recommended daily allotment (RDA) and you head towards scurvy. But the RDA doesn't address the issue of what's the max daily dose that's beneficial-Vitamin D is instructive here. Over the past ten years legitimate scientific has shown that doses of Vit D above the RDA help with a wide variety of human conditions-Google it.

So depending on our diet Vitamins may correct deficiencies or may promote health. But it's important to not see them as a panacea- they are called supplements for a reason. Finally I'm a retired Registered Nurse and I despise junk science. Enthusiasts, often with commercial interests, overstate the case for supplements. Drive your skepticism right to the edge of cynicism here.

I more so take stuff for my skin and energy, but still has to be taken with the right foods etc to work properly

Because your starting assumption is backwards.

People in developed country mostly get the nutrition they need from their diets, and vitamin supplements are mostly "expensive pee". Modern western diets are heavy on fats and simple carbs and not all that healthy in some other ways, but one thing they're usually not is deficient in micronutrients, in part because so many foods are "fortified" (but also because modern food infrastructure provides most of us with historically unprecedented access to a wide variety of foods, especially fruits and vegetables).

You only need a supplement if you have an actual deficiency, which is something you should be discussing with a doctor or dietitian (not taking on faith from "somebody told me" which usually traces back at some level to marketing by the supplement industry).

Most vitamins are water-soluble; your body doesn't store them, and the excess is just filtered out by your kidneys. Vitamins that aren't water soluble (like Vitamin A) can build up in your system and poison you.

Bottom line: Vitamin supplements aren't magical "make you healthier" pills. They can help fix a dietary deficiency if you have one, but there's no benefit (and possible harm) beyond that.

In general, for a person in economically developed country, vitamins just make expensive pee.

If you have deficiencies , either because of a health condition, or poor diet, they can help you be normal, not healthier than normal.

I didn't do the research but I've seen it and magnesium reduces all death rates by 34%, cancer by 50%, heart 40% and sudden cardiac by 77% so I'd disagree that taking supplements doesn't make you live longer

Let’s be honest too many want to convince themselves that vits don’t work to save money.
My opinion is use Solgar or its equivalent if you can afford it plus glucosamine and chondroitin to retain a youthful appearance.It works since the vits boost what you receive from good foods.

And now you have hit on the biggest health scam there is: Vitamins. Your body does not know what to do when given the plain salt form of these vitamins so they just pass right through you. Your body was actually designed to extract micronutrients from the food you eat. Who knws more about this than anyone? NASA. They don't give astronaughts protein pills and vitamins. They eat whole foods hot and delicious or else they get sicker than they normally do in space.

Vitamins and trace minerals do wonders to your health if you're needing them. Those need requirements are very very small, so they're very easily met in modern society. If you're on reddit, chances are extremely high you're already meeting your vitamin needs, and adding more won't really do anything (especially compared to other diet & lifestyle choices).

Vitamins were something like a miracle medicine about a century ago, when various conditions like rickets, scurvy, and pellagra were found to be cured by the extremely simple intervention of adding specific foods to one's diet.

To see where this is still relevant, we need to get far, far away from redditing and meet people living in less connected areas whose diet is, accordingly, more limited. E.g. in certain margin communities in sub-saharan Africa, there's still millions whose health can be dramatically improved by the simple action of giving access to iodised salt. And the cost to provide this is extremely small, especially compared to the subsequent pay-offs saved in health care, improved industrial and economic output, and human suffering.

BBCs horizon series did a good documentary on it. I think it was this one: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06p99mk