Multivitamin tablets are taken by people all over the world in hopes of getting the proper nutrients that regular food intake doesn’t provide. People, especially over the age of 50, take multivitamin or individual vitamins. But do multivitamins actually give you all the advertised benefits?
Let’s start by looking at what a multivitamin actually is. They are supplements that have a handful of vitamins and minerals. Although what nutrients they contain is different from different multivitamins, they are of many different forms such as chewables, tablets, capsules, or even liquids.
Multivitamins will contain a lot of the 13 vitamins and 16 minerals that are needed by the body apart from other additives like amino and fatty acids and herbs.
There are numerous researches that give us a conclusive answer to the effects of multivitamins. One such study that was reported by the Daily Telegraph suggested that vitamins aren’t all that useful and they do not protect us from any illnesses.
The studies were conducted on two separate trials which were randomised. After the study was reviewed, there very little evidence that suggested there were benefits from taking supplements. But these studies were performed to determine whether said supplements had any impact on the prevention of heart diseases or cancer.
These tests were run on 1700 people who previously had a myocardial infarction, or a heart attack. High dosage of oral multivitamins was administered on 6000 male doctors who were doctors to check if multivitamins affected their cognitive functions later on.
It was also found that there were reduced chances of cancer and cataracts. But the tests were inconclusive as to whether there were safe to be administered without the supervision of a physician in the long run.
The tests have also been mixed when it came to the cardiovascular effects of multivitamins. There were some studies that found a reduction in the risk of heart diseases while there were others that found no impact at all. It was also found that there was a 35% reduction in heart-related deaths when it came to women and not men.
For cancer, some studies found out that there was no involvement of multivitamins to the disease while in other cases, the use of multivitamins linked to the increase of cancer risk. Men who used multivitamins had a 31% lower chance of cancer while chances of colon cancer were reduced in both men and women.
In older adults, the uses of supplements were linked with better memory and improved mood. This is due to the fact that many vitamin deficiencies were found to be the reason for bad mood.
