In this age of medical advancement, we have come to adopt a highly dynamic lifestyle. We tend to get so tangled in our everyday routine that we ignore our health. As a result, we pop one pill after another to keep ourselves healthy and nourished. One of the most frequently used pills are multivitamins.
What Are Multivitamins?
Multivitamins are a combination of various vitamins and minerals found in food, synthetically put together in the form of tablets or capsules to remove deficiencies.
People usually take multivitamin pills to maintain their overall health and wellness and to fill any nutritional gap in their diet. A basic low dose helps fight low energy levels, stress, and fatigue. People use these tablets to make up for the nutrients if they fall short of the essential minerals and vitamins.
What We Know So Far
Normally, pills are taken to protect the health, but a daily cocktail of essential vitamins and minerals rarely proves to be beneficial.
The research being conducted on multivitamins does not show positive results. Despite many kinds of research in this area, only a handful of studies support the claims of multivitamins being beneficial. In fact, many nutritionists and health advisors have clearly declared taking multivitamins to fix a poor diet as a bad idea. Experts are unwilling to carry out study after study to look for evidence of the benefits of multivitamin tablets. They have advised people to save their money instead.
According to the director of Johns Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Larry Appel, pills are not a shortcut to the improvement of health and prevention of chronic diseases.
The only way to prevent life-threatening diseases or minor deficiencies is to maintain a healthy and balanced diet.
In a study with 1700 heart attack survivors, participants were asked to take about six large pills daily for a decade. More than half the patients stopped taking pills before the study ended, claiming they developed pill fatigue. At the end of the study, no significant difference was found in second heart attacks, chest pains and other diseases.
Another study by the name of Physicians’ Health Study II tested a multivitamin which contains thirty-one minerals and vitamins and is commonly taken by people. The test was conducted on male physicians for over a decade. The result showed only a small reduction in cancer and heart diseases.
No concrete evidence has been found regarding multivitamins preventing deteriorating mental health, memory loss and slow thinking. It provides no protection against cardiovascular diseases. No significant decrease in cancer was reported either. The only exceptions are pregnant women who were recommended to take multivitamin tablets to prevent neural tube diseases in babies.
Conclusion
While the risk of consuming these tablets is small, they also don’t provide any significant health benefits. The only way to fill the nutritional gap is to adopt a balanced diet and maintain a healthy weight by reducing fats and sugar in the diet. No supplements or artificial tablets can make up for the nutrients the body receives from a proper meal. All researchers have advised saving money as they have also stopped spending on research to prove the effectiveness of multivitamins.
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