Are vitamin tablets harmful? I eat one a day and have been for over 20 years. But some people tell me they are not necessarily good for you?

"Are vitamin tablets harmful? I eat one a day and have been for over 20 years. But some people tell me they are not necessarily good for you?"

There is nothing wrong with taking a single multi-vitamin tablet daily no they're not harmful, especially if it's one of the good quality ones. The cheap ones are questionable though, in the quality, and if they're actually delivering on what they're saying they have. A good quality multi-vitamin though can help make sure you're getting all of the essential vitamin and minerals. It's easy to be deficient in some areas nutritionally, even with a good well planned and balanced diet. Even if you planned out meals and made certain you were trying to cover everything, it's still possible to have a deficiency somewhere. This though could be due to some type of malabsorption. As we age our body's don't absorb nutrients as well. There are also genetic disorders that can cause absorption issues as well.

Unless you know specifically what you're missing in your diet, and how to correct it, through diet, a multi-vitamin can help. The only way to know if the one you're taking, and have been for twenty years, is through blood testing, for specific deficiencies. There though is some contention over not only vitamins, but many other supplements as well, and their efficiency, and effectiveness.

However there are deficiencies that are more common than people may think. If you live in North America, and more specifically the top two vitamin deficiencies are number one vitamin D3, at eighty to ninety percent of the population. Globally though over thirty eight percent. Next is vitamin B12 with fourty percent being deficient in it. There are others people are deficient in but those are the top two. However there are blood tests can be done to determine if there's a deficiency in those two as well as other tests, for any other deficiencies. Two others include vitamin B7, also known as biotin, and vitamin B9 also known as folate/folic acid.

Although vitamin D (specifically vitamin D3) can be synthesized by the body through exposure of being outside in the sunlight (sitting in from of a window does not work), many are deficient in it due to sunscreens that prevent it, as well as other factors, such as skin tone, weight, or other genetic factors. Vitamin D3 can be gotten through certain cold water fish, and some types of meats.

However there are three vitamin one must take with taking as individual supplements they are vitamins A, D, and E. They are fat soluble, and if they build up to high, can cause vitamin poisoning. There is a fourth fat soluble but there's not much information regarding levels, and that's vitamin K, which maybe like vitamin B group, that it's a group, or complex.

Not harmful but rather unnecessary. A lot of vitamins in supplements are just passed through the body as the body does not need certain excess vitamins. Its just more stuff for your kidneys to process.

There is no real science about how vitamin supplements affect the body in the long term. But there is science which certainly suggests which supplements you should never take.

Those supplements include:

Vitamin D2 (unless prescribed by a doctor), vitamin B3 in the form of niacin, policosanol, raspberry ketones, potassium, HGH, synthetic multivitamins (should be raw multivitamins), vitamin C, vitamin A, beta carotene, vitamin E, vitamin B6.

Good health!

PDG