Do Supplemental Vitamins Actually Work?

A vitamin a day keeps you healthy to play. Or does it?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Kristin Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and we're hosts
of the podcast Stuff Mom never told you That gets
down to the business of being women from every imaginable angle.
That's right. Kristen and I skillfully decode the biology, psychology,
and sociology of ladies and gents from their evolutionary past
a millennial present to better understand all of that stuff

(00:22):
Mom never told you. No offense moms, Now be sure
to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to brain
Stuff from How Stuff Works. I'm Christian Seger and welcome
to brain Stuff. If you're like me, you grew up

(00:44):
being taught that taking your vitamins was an important part
of a balanced healthy life. The alternative is to eat
exactly the right amount of foods to supply your body
with the recommended daily value of nutrients. And who wants
to do all that work when you can just swallow
a pill, or even better, chew on a block of
sugar shaped like your favorite cartoon character. But our supplemental

(01:08):
vitamins actually helpful? Does a vitamin a day truly keep
you healthy to play well? First, let's get a simple
understanding of how vitamins work. They're really just small molecules
that our bodies need to carry out certain reactions. Unfortunately,
our bodies don't make vitamins themselves, so we need to
eat food that contains these important molecules. There's two types

(01:32):
of vitamins. Water soluble vitamins need to be replenished every day,
and fat soluble vitamins need to dissolve before they enter
our bodies. Our bile acids do this for us, breaking
the vitamins down and storing them in our livers or
body fat. The downside is that these vitamins can build
up in our systems, surpassing their necessary value. Sixty years ago,

(01:55):
the first multi vitamin became available on the American market. Basically,
this is a pill that contains at least ten vitamins
and ten minerals to supplement our diet. Now, millions of
adults and children devour these pills every day, spending twelve
billion dollars a year on them. If you don't have
the time to gather fresh fruit, vegetables, and grains every day,
then you're probably taking a multi vitamin. But several recent

(02:18):
studies have shown that there are some negative effects to
be aware of when taking multi vitamins. For instance, less
than half the multi vitamins sold in the US and
Canada actually contain what their labels say. Sometimes they'll have
too much of a supplement, like a children's vitamin that
had two hundred and sixteen percent the amount of vitamin
A listed. You think kids just p out all that

(02:39):
extra vitamin A. No, it weakens their bones and potentially
causes abnormalities and their livers. Other multi vitamins can contain
substances that don't even belong in them, like lead, for instance,
and unless you really need to foil Superman's X ray vision,
you probably shouldn't ingest that much lead. That, my friends,

(03:01):
are just the multi vitamins that are mislabeled. Some experts
believe that we don't always gain benefits from vitamins unless
they are absorbed into our body along with the other
compounds found in their natural form. So maybe vitamin C
doesn't work unless you digest it with an orange. Also,
supplement research is really difficult to gauge because each of

(03:22):
us eats an incredibly broad variety of foods that could
help or hinder the absorption of vitamins. Not to mention
that the Food and Drug Administration doesn't require these supplements
to go through the same scrutiny for safety and efficacy
that it does for say, medicine or drugs. The more
we look into it, it seems that multi vitamins either
have no substantial health benefits or their benefits are too

(03:47):
small to make much of a difference. Let's look at
a few examples of how this plays out, Starting with
folic acid. This is one of those supplements originally thought
to protect the heart and prevent cancer. Based on a
two thousand eight sty the out of Harvard, it turns
out that too much folic acid may instead promote prostate
and colorectal cancer, and because food companies add it to

(04:09):
grain products, most of us are already getting our daily
values worth What about vitamin C, the one we're supposed
to take when we get sick. Well, if you eat
foods that are rich in vitamin C, it can lower
your risk of heart disease and cancer, But if you
simply take it in pillform, it seems to have no benefits. Also,
vitamin C can enhance your iron absorption, so be careful

(04:32):
if you have hemochromatosis or you'll end up with too
much iron in your system. Another vitamin that supposedly prevented
heart disease and cancer is vitamin E. But again that's
only in its natural form in nuts, seeds, and vegetable oils,
where it can also strengthen the immune system. As a supplement,
there's no evidence vitamin E provides any of its natural benefits.

(04:55):
In fact, some research shows that doses over four hundred
international units a day can actually increase your mortality. Let
me spell that out for you. That means you'll die
faster if you have too much vitamin E. Vitamin A
is very similar in that it doesn't actually prevent lung
cancer as it's advertised. In fact, large doses actually increase

(05:17):
the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Most of us
are already getting plenty of vitamin A anyway, in eggs,
whole milk, dark leafy veggies, and orange or yellow fruits.
And remember those kids I mentioned who got too much
vitamin A from their multi vitamin Both their bones and
livers were weakened. But if you're pregnant adult, too much

(05:40):
vitamin A can lead to birth defects. B vitamins were
originally thought to help people with Alzheimer's disease or even
raise your energy levels, but the trial results have been disappointing,
with no evidence that it does either. But B twelve
is one of the vitamins that can help supplement an
unbalanced diet. It's good good for strict vegetarians who aren't

(06:02):
getting everything they need from animal derived food, but otherwise
you don't really need it unless you're pregnant or facing
macular degeneration from old age, two things I'm not currently
worried about. Finally, let's look at vitamin D, you know,
the one we get from the sun. There's still hope
that it can help with osteoporosis, but the data is

(06:23):
inconclusive since everyone gets different amounts of sun exposure. If
you're already getting a decent amount of midday sun exposure
and regularly consume foods like fatty fish, eggs, and fortified
dairy products, you probably don't need a d supplement. Perhaps
in the future will be able to just pop a
pill personally tailored to our nutrition, but as it stands today,

(06:45):
your best bet is to still eat a balanced diet
from good old fashioned hold foods. However, this doesn't mean
you should run home and pour all your multi vitamins
down the toilet. Just do a little research on what
your body needs and whether the pill you're taking is
actually necessary. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and

(07:08):
for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com.