More than half of Americans take multivitamins and dietary supplements daily, but doctors and pharmacists say many of them are a waste of money.
In a TikTok, pharmacist Amina Khan told her 271,000 followers that there are three types of supplements she would never take, including the popular gummy vitamins.
These gummies have several drawbacks, one of which is that they are usually sweetened with sugar, between three and five grams.
It may not seem like much, but the recommended dosage is two gummies a day and the American Heart Association recommends no more than 25 grams of sugar for women and 36 grams for men per day.
Mrs Khan said: “These are basically just a sugar pill – you might as well go have a sweet.”
“It’s very easy to consume too much of them and cause mineral toxicity.”
Khan also said that multivitamins are not worth the money, as some researchers say they often contain negligible amounts of crucial vitamins and minerals.
Similarly, supplements aimed at improving hair, skin and nail health, popularized through social media, are ineffective, Khan said.
Gummy vitamins are usually loaded with sugar. The levels of vitamins and minerals they contain are also too low to have much benefit.
Gummy vitamins have wide appeal and often appear and taste more like candy than a health supplement, says Dr. Khan. saying.
According to doctors at UCLA: “Even if gummy vitamins are sugar-free, they likely contain other sweeteners, such as high-sugar fruit juices or sugar alcohols, which can cause unpleasant digestive problems.”
They taste good, are easy to take, and don’t have the characteristic vitamin smell.
They are especially appealing to children, who may have an aversion to swallowing or be unable to swallow pills.
But gummies owe their flavor to several grams of sugar.
Dr. Zariah Chappell, a family medicine physician at Scripps Coastal Medical Center San Marcos in California, saying: ‘It’s like taking a sugar pill or candy 365 days a year.
‘It’s a large amount of sugar that can build up quickly. Children in particular may eat more than the recommended dose because the vitamins taste great and even look like popular sweets.’
Secondly, Ms Khan talked about multivitamins, which “contain a little bit of everything”.
‘Some of the doses of each nutrient are so low that they will hardly have any effect on you. Also, you don’t need all the vitamins in the multivitamin.
Multivitamins are said to contain a little bit of everything, meaning that the concentrations of vitamins and minerals are too low to have a measurable benefit.
A Johns Hopkins study, which included 450,000 people, found that multivitamins had no beneficial effect on the prevention of heart disease.
Another study looked at about 1,700 people who had previously suffered heart attacks. They were told to take a multivitamin or a placebo twice a day for five years. Their findings showed that taking multivitamins did not affect the risk of heart attack or mortality.
Dr. Edgar Miller, an internal medicine specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said, “Study after study shows negative results, yet people continue to take supplements, now at record rates.”
Studies demonstrating its ineffectiveness have not impacted the market. The global vitamins and supplements market size was $146.14 billion in 2023.
One population that would still benefit from a multivitamin is people who are malnourished or pregnant.
Finally, supplements for hair, skin and nails are equally ineffective, Khan said.
It would be more appropriate for people to take a single-focus supplement, rather than one designed to target all three.
An effective supplement targets a certain problem, such as vitamin B8 for hair thickness and vitamin D for skin cell growth.
The best way to improve one’s health is to take supplements specifically aimed at helping each one individually.
Ms Khan said: ‘Multivitamins for hair, skin and nails, what do you focus on? Hair, skin or nails?
Hair, skin, and nail supplements do not adequately target the areas they are designed to improve. The best supplements, pharmacists say, and those that individually target each problem area rather than grouping ingredients together to weakly attack several
Most people are not deficient in the vitamins included in supplements, such as antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, and E, or coenzyme Q10, and biotin, a B-complex vitamin.
And for those people, there is no clear evidence that supplements make a difference.
Dr. Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an expert on dietary supplements, said Consumer Reports: ‘I’m not aware of any solid data to suggest that any supplement can treat aging-related natural hair loss or nail damage, or give you healthier skin.
“It’s nothing that would lead me to recommend it to any of my patients.”
Many supplements and vitamins are not regulated by the FDA, so it is difficult to know if you are getting what is advertised on a supplement’s packaging.
Additionally, a lack of oversight means that manufacturers may include substances not declared on the label, and some could interact with medications.
The federal agency only intervenes when a product has been shown to cause harm, although it does inspect the facilities where supplements are manufactured.