Yes they have an expiration date, but do they actually go bad?
They just lose potency until eventually they provide no benefit.
https://www.cnet.com/health/nutrition/you-can-still-use-expired-vitamins/
Agreed to an extent. Due to the lack of regulation for vitamins though, long-term degradation studies aren’t routinely performed. So as they “lose potency” aka degrade, it’s not clear what the breakdown products are.
While probably safe to consume far after their expiration date, more regulations would need to be put in place to ensure that.
This is done with drugs by the FDA for drug safety. As far as I know vitamins and other supplements like that do not fall under that category and often are much less regulated than they should be.
Yeah, it’s pretty vague. I think the proper takeaway is to use them as soon as possible, and at the very least they probably won’t do harm. Hopefully.
I will note, unless you are deficient, multivitamins may not do much if anything. I have a vitamin d deficiency and if I don’t take supplements, it shows up on my blood tests so if your body is lacking or you have a terrible diet, it may just be a waste of money.
Multivitamins may actually be harmful. Fat soluble Vitamins may have weird properties which could be bad even with correct dosage. Vitamin B6 can be easily overdosed as even the recommended values are questionable.
However, I strongly advise against going to just by “terrible diet” and do only until something shows on regular check-ups. There can be subacute deficiencies, they won’t show up on routine checks or not at all anywhere as we can’t “Star Trek Health Scan” the human body and especially the brain. Also your diet is terrible by default. Why? Because depending on the geographic region and especially with modern agriculture which killed off all kinds of biodiversity and trace elements is more than likely to be worse than a century ago with the same ingredients. It is not easy to recommend a Vitamin stack as there are so many things we don’t quite know and regulation is practically absent.
I agree on top of the fact they aren’t regulated so their dosage may and can be completely off.
And depending on what brand you buy or how much you take, you could be exposing yourself to a lot of heavy metals
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Isn’t the whole point of multivitamins to make sure you’re not deficient?
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Yes, most people who live in a western country and don’t take major shortcuts when it comes to their diet don’t need to supplement much. Taking vitamins can in fact lead to serious complications, given that there is no benefit for the vast majority, there is no reason to take on that risk for “prophylaxis”.
Notable exceptions is Vitamin D - this is produced by your skin in the sun. 5 direct sunlight minutes in a T-shirt daily is enough, so supplementing 1k IU daily in months when you can not do that is advisable. So necessity will depend on climate.
That HIGHLY depends on the climate. 5 minutes in direct sunlight in a t-shirt was referencing someone around the equator under optimal conditions I believe.
As an example, here in belgium, it is often cloudy and rainy for weeks or months at a time, combined with winter sun being significantly less effective at generating vitamin D just due to passing through much more of the atmosphere.
The majority of central and northern European countries, along with most people above Missouri or so in America, especially in the midwest will not get enough vitamin D from the above reasons along with the fact that wearing a T-shirt just isn’t feasible, and people will be often fully covered outside of their face. That means that possibility of absorption is extremely low. Studies have shown that many or most people in these areas are vitamin D deficient through the winter.
Also the “standard recommendation” for vitamin D has been suggested by a few studies to be significantly too low (>2x higher daily dosage needed before deficiency), but that is getting into less supported theories. Though there isn’t much funding for those types of studies, so who knows.
Yes, the D data is incomplete and mostly done in sunny climates, the reference range for vitamin D in blood is also based in iirc Spain or that climate, so it might be that slightly defficient in colder climates is a-ok. Plus it is hard to separate bogus claims when it comes to D, since people want to implicate it in everything from immune compromise to why your nanas cookies don’t taste too good.
That said, 5 minutes out in direct sun is probably a fair recommendation because most people will likely spend more than 5 minutes out if they have made it there. I think the recommendation is more about the climate / weather conditions rather than “take off your clothes for 5 mins in the winter”. If you have to go out more covered (i.e. long sleeves, pants) for the majority of a month, you will want to supplement. If you are unsure can always check serum levels.
Personally I take more than 1k IU, but I will stick to official recommendations when giving advice.
Can you even GET simple multivitamins any more? I remember they were fairly small pills (aspirin size) and you’get a bottle of 365. Now they are big pills in fancy packaging so you get like 30 in a bottle, and you have to take a whole pile of pills to get the same set of vitamins that used to come in 1 pill.
Yes, one a day men’s for example is $17.50 for a 200 count bottle
There are other brands like that.
All the multivitamins that are like “Life Extension, Brain Support, Sexual Health” or some other baseless claim are the ones banking on uneducated people to pay 60 dollars for 30 pills
This is from Walgreens way back but I don’t see anything like it anymore. 365 pills for $8, expired 2016, so maybe 1.5x inflation since then.
That’s true. I didn’t mean to put forth the idea that the enshittification that has affected all products has not affected multivitamins. Moreso that the new “niche” multivitamin scams that are being sold for a dollar per pill are not the same as the traditional multivitamin, which as you are mentioning, is now more expensive, but still not at the level of the vitamins that have instagram influencer sponsors
Multivitamins marketed to the elderly are usually a great deal less expensive with similar or identical content. I found this out while comparing vitamins during pregnancy, just had to add extra folate.
