Browse by Subject
Search Harvard Well being Publishing
What can we enable you discover? Enter search phrases and faucet the Search button. Each articles and merchandise shall be searched.
Procuring Cart
Please observe: When you’ve got a promotional code you will be prompted to enter it previous to confirming your order.
Buyer Signal In
Returning Buyer
When you’ve got an account, please register.
New Prospects
In case you subscribe to any of our print newsletters and have by no means activated your on-line account, please activate your account beneath for on-line entry. By activating your account, you’ll create a login and password. You solely must activate your account as soon as.
Activate My Account
What we learn about multivitamins to date – “are multivitamins worth it”
Regardless of all of the analysis on nutritional vitamins and well being, now we have solely a handful of rigorous scientific research on the advantages of what Dr. Sesso calls a “true” multivitamin: a capsule that gives important nutritional vitamins and minerals on the comparatively low ranges that the physique usually requires.
The Physicians’ Well being Examine II is the most effective research accomplished to date. It was the primary and solely large-scale randomized medical trial to check a generally taken multivitamin like those most individuals take, containing the day by day necessities of 31 nutritional vitamins and minerals important for good well being.
A big group of male physicians took both a multivitamin or a placebo capsule for greater than a decade. The outcomes have been combined, with modest reductions in most cancers and cataracts, however no protecting impact towards heart problems or declining psychological operate. Is it protected?
Multivitamin advocates level to the dearth of any sturdy proof that taking a multivitamin for a few years is harmful. “While I agree that the likelihood of harm is small, the likelihood of a clear health benefit is also very small—and also we have no clear proof yet of such benefit,” says Dr. Guallar, a scientist on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg College of Public Well being.
Dr. Sesso speaks for the optimists, who urge a wait-and-see strategy. “Multivitamin supplementation is low risk and low cost, and it helps to fill potential gaps in the diet that people might have,” Dr. Sesso says. “These are compelling reasons to consider taking a multivitamin for cancer and eye disease that should be discussed with your physician.”
For now, you’ll be able to take sure steps:
Disclaimer:
As a service to our readers, Harvard Well being Publishing gives entry to our library of archived content material. Please observe the date of final evaluate or replace on all articles. No content material on this web site, no matter date, ought to ever be used as an alternative to direct medical recommendation out of your physician or different certified clinician.
What does the proof recommend?
Physicians’ Well being Examine II
Researchers seemed on the impact of long-term multivitamin use in wholesome males on numerous features of well being. Here’s what they discovered:
Picture: Yakobchuk/Getty Pictures