Are multivitamins good for you? 3 supplements you should avoid

3 supplements you should avoid, according to a pharmacist

1. Gummy vitamins

Gummy supplements are everywhere. Omega-3 gummies, vitamin C gummies, iron gummies, collagen gummies… There are multicoloured Chicory Root prebiotic gummies and gummies enriched with Ayurvedic plants that promise to improve hair health. There are even Minions-themed gummy vitamins for kids.

But, gummy vitamins or gummy bears are on Pharmacist Khan’s steer-clear list. ‘These are basically just a sugar pill, you might as well have a sweet,’ Khan says. ‘They are packed with sugar and filler ingredients… they can be very easily over-consumed and can lead to mineral toxicity.’

In fact, most gummy vitamins contain between 2 and 8 grams of sugar per serving (for reference, according to the NHS, adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars a day, and children aged 7 to 10 should have no more than 24g of free sugars a day).

‘Even if your gummy vitamins are sugar-free, they likely contain other sweeteners, such as high-sugar fruit juice or sugar alcohols, which can cause unpleasant digestive issues,’ say doctors at UCLA Health.

‘Some of these gummies don’t even have enough nutrients in them to have an effect on you,’ she adds.

2. Multivitamins

Multivitamins are supposed to be a shortcut for those not getting enough vitamins and minerals through their diet. But since multivitamins have no standard regulatory definition, their nutrient contents and quantities vary widely between products and brands.

‘These have a bit of everything in – some of the doses of each nutrient are so low, that they hardly have an effect on you,’ says Khan.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you take multivitamins and eat many nutrient-dense foods, you could exceed the recommended daily intake of many nutrients – which can have harmful effects (too much of anything is never a good thing). ‘You don’t need all the vitamins in a multivitamin,’ she adds.

Multivitamin supplements are not a replacement for eating a healthy diet and cannot be used to mitigate the effects of an unhealthy diet

3. Hair, skin and nail multivitamins

Specific multivitamins that promise to support the health of your hair, skin and nails have been growing in popularity over the past few years – and who doesn’t want clearer skin, shinier hair and stronger nails?

But, as Khan points out, ‘the most important vitamins in these are often too low to even have an effect on you’. Of course, every supplement varies wildly in ingredients, efficacy and potency, but there’s very little data to show that either a beauty supplement or a multivitamin will improve the health of the skin in an otherwise healthy person without any vitamin deficiencies.

Are multivitamins good for you?

According to a recent randomised, placebo-controlled trial – in which 228 older adults (average age of 74) from the United Kingdom were asked to take either a multivitamin/ multimineral supplement or a placebo every day for 12 weeks – supplementing with the multivitamin/multimineral had no effect on wellbeing in either men or women.

While a major study published earlier this year in JAMA Network Open, found that taking a daily multivitamin not only doesn’t help people to live longer but can actually increase the risk of early death.

The researchers analysed health records from nearly 400,000 adults with no major long-term diseases to see whether taking a daily multivitamin would reduce their risk of death over the next two decades. Rather than living longer, people who consumed multivitamins were more likely (than non-users‚ to die in the study period. The researchers concluded that: ‘these findings suggest that multivitamin use to improve longevity is not supported’.

The bottom line? If you do plan on taking a supplement, always consult your doctor first.

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