I have been thinking about this post for a few weeks. This one is a confession, and then a favor to ask.
I have a hard time being consistent with my own multivitamin. That's an awkward thing for a physician to admit.
Most mornings I look at the bottle and can't tell you which of those ingredients I actually need, or whether the amounts in there are doing anything. So some days I take it. Some days I don't.
The only supplement I've ever added and kept is fish oil because I did the research and I could find a number I believed.
Before I go further, one click.
Your answers shape how I write about supplements after I build upon the pillars of health.
The cabinet
I understood why it bothered me the day I opened my parents' medicine cabinet.
It's a small pharmacy. A daily multivitamin. A separate vitamin D. A magnesium. A zinc, because they read something. A B-complex sitting on top of the B vitamins already in the multi. A calcium dose high enough to potentially increase risks of heart problems. And a fish oil with so little EPA and DHA that they'd have to swallow most of the bottle to reach a dose anyone has studied.
Nobody is adding up the totals. Almost nobody knows there is an upper limit of safety, let alone where it sits.
I don't think it's only them. I think most of us are guessing.
And "are supplements good or bad" has never helped anyone standing in front of an open cabinet at 7am. The useful question is narrower:
Does what's printed on the label make it into the pill, in a form your body can use, and do you even need all of it?
Let's solve this together
I want to try and answer this properly, but I need real labels to do it. Not the products a search engine puts in front of me. The ones sitting in your cabinet right now.
If you know someone with a crowded medicine cabinet, send them this and ask them to add theirs.
Hit reply and tell me the brand you take. I'll report back what I find once I have enough of them to say something useful.
So here's my question. When you reach for that bottle in the morning, do you actually believe it's earning its place?
Most of us aren't taking a supplement. We're taking a guess.
Next two weeks: creatine, and what it actually does for the brain and muscle.
Forward this to whoever you thought of while reading it.