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This May, an expert panel convened by the National Institutes of Health took an in-depth look at the potential health effects of multivitamins and decided that there just wasn’t enough solid evidence to recommend their regular use (draft statement).  While the panel found solid links between some individual vitamins and minerals and a lower risk of some diseases—vitamin D and calcium to improve bone health in postmenopausal women, for example, and folic acid in women of childbearing age to lower the risk of neural tube defects in newborns—they felt the demonstrated overall benefits of vitamin and mineral supplements were quite slim.  This, combined with some safety concerns about supplement use, kept the panel from recommending that all adults take a multivitamin regularly. 

However, the approach of the NIH panel seemed to de-emphasize many of the potential benefits of vitamins and minerals while elevating their potential risks. 

When the safety data are looked at as whole, and in relation to the dose of supplements generally contained in a regular multivitamin, the risks of taking a daily multivitamin are really very small. 

At the same time, if you slightly relax the approach to determining the benefits of multivitamins by including both decent and well-established evidence, the relatively small list of potential benefits greatly expands to one that includes a number of vitamins and minerals and some very common diseases.  Along with lowering the risk of fractures and neural tube defects, you can add, among others, heart disease, colon cancer, and breast cancer.  For people who drink alcohol regularly, the cancer and heart disease benefits are likely even greater.

When this long list of potential benefits is balanced with the low risk and cost of just pennies a day, a daily multivitamin looks like a sensible nutrition insurance policy.  That many government and other health related organizations already recommend that all women of childbearing age get at least 400 micrograms of folic acid daily—often through a multivitamin—and it’s not much more of stretch to extend this to the entire adult population.

Of course “insurance policy” is the key term.  Multivitamins can’t replace a healthy diet rich in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and low in red meat and saturated and trans fats.  But, they can help bridge the gap those times we aren’t getting all we need for our health through the food we eat.

—Written by Hank Dart
HCCP Staff