Everyone seems to know you should take a daily multi-vitamin, and many people add lots of other vitamins too, but what do doctors and the medical establishment say? The answer may surprise you!
Until the 1980s most doctors thought vitamins didn’t do any good, and that they simply came out in your urine, not benefiting your body or health at all. Over time though, many have changed their opinions and have started taking them themselves. For example, my father, a retired doctor, has started taking multi-vitamins the last few years like many of his peers.
Antioxidant vitamins like vitamin E and beta carotene were all the rage a decade ago, but the medical establishment has changed their tune after the results of some negative and conflicting reports. But what about a simple multi-vitamin? There are several reasons to take a daily multivitamin.
Vitamin D is hard to come by in diet and needed to absorb calcium in your diet. People who get little sunlight, often because of skin cancer concerns, may have a vitamin D deficiency.
Vitamins B6, B12 and folic acid, another B vitamin, are also important. In particular, vitamin B12 is not present in vegetables so vegetarians may be deficient.
Much of the medical establishment recommends a daily multi-vitamin these days. Harvard Men’s Health Watch for example, suggests an inexpensive preparation with 100% of the daily recommended value of vitamins D, B6, B12 and folic acid, and that makes sense to us too. Most medical practitioners suggest that expensive high potency, designer, or all-natural vitamins are unnecessary, just a basic multi-vitamin as described above.
