Deficiency of various minerals and vitamins may lead to a number of conditions like low immunity, constant fatigue, body ache, frequent cough and cold, loss of weight or obesity, which may force you to visit your local physician. The doctor upon diagnosing some vitamin or mineral deficiency will abruptly prescribe you a multivitamin pill to recover from the deficiency – seems a convenient way!
Even with major health ailments, whether it is diabetes or hypertension or hypercholesterolemia or heart disease; doctors along with the medication are quick to add some kind of nutritional supplements and multivitamin tablets.
As common, whether you are consuming nutritional supplements or tonics recommended by doctors or you are taking multivitamin capsules or milk powder or protein supplements on your own just for general wellbeing, then you must understand that consuming such nutritional products are not just a waste but even injurious to health, as the mechanism of multivitamin pills itself is faulty.
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Let’s say you are prescribed with a Vitamin C tablet to recover from vitamin C deficiency. But what this vitamin C tablet actually does to the body is shown through this flowchart.
Therefore, in order to balance a little deficiency of Vitamin C; the entire bio-chemistry of the body is disturbed. Moreover, excess dosage/undesirable quantity leads to toxicity along with imbalancing the absorption of other essential nutrients.
Have you ever pondered why is it that in nature you never find a fruit or a vegetable with only one kind of vitamin or mineral? If you talk of an apple, then other than vitamin C, an average apple per 100g edible portion contains a total of 54 nutrients.
In an apple, all the nutrients are in a very delicate balance in such a manner that when you consume an apple as a whole, all the above nutrients react with each other to make a perfect balance so as to get absorbed and utilized by the body without disturbing the homeostasis (inner balance) of the body. The intricate calculation of the combination of nutrients while natural preparations of fruits and vegetables can only be achieved by nature, so logically this calculation is beyond the comprehension of humans.
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Many researchers support the same idea and confirm that taking multivitamins and nutritional supplements present no benefit to the body.
In a latest study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which involved a systematic review of the data and trials from the year 2012 to 2017 reported that, “Multivitamins (especially the most widely prescribed vitamin C, vitamin D, and calcium) did not reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, or early death.”
Also, it is worth mentioning that the Cochrane Report of March 14, 2012 concluded long back that, “Vitamins and Minerals supplements increase the mortality rate with various diseases in general population.” You must know that Cochrane is WHO recognized organization having branches in more than 100 countries including India rendered as the supreme authority among reports and journals.
It is important to note that the brand market to supplements is strong and consumers are lured and mislead by attractive advertisements, plus the money-minded practitioners won’t waste a minute of their time to tell you the truth. Alas, the government remains silent and helpless as these big brands have huge market value and big shares in a country’s economy.
But lastly, It’s your health and your decision whether to take the next pill or not!
(Views expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the stand of the publication)