What if you could take one pill and suddenly have more energy, better skin, and a healthier heart? That’s the promise that beckons every time I walk by the supplements aisle at my local drugstore—filled with fish oil capules, jugs of collagen powder, magnesium chews, and every letter of vitamin under the sun.
It’s tempting. So it’s no wonder that supplements are projected to balloon to a $200-billion global industry by 2025.
But I’ve always had a healthy dose of skepticism about how much any of these supplements can really do and whether they’re worth the cost. These are some of the insights from our previous reporting on supplements—with the very important caveat that you should always consult your doctor first about health decisions.
1) Supplements aren’t strictly regulated.
Nearly every story we’ve published about supplements hits on one key point: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate dietary supplements in the same way as it does food and drugs—meaning companies don’t need to submit products to the FDA for approval before putting them on the market.
This can lead to some misleading labels. Jen Messer, a registered dietitian and president elect of the New Hampshire Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, pointed our reporter Daryl Austin to an analysis of 57 dietary supplements. It found that 84 percent didn’t contain the amount of ingredients claimed, 40 percent didn’t have any of the ingredients claimed—and 12 percent “contained undeclared ingredients, which is prohibited by the FDA,” she said in our November 2023 article.
(Do collagen supplements really work?)
It also means that companies don’t need to provide the FDA with evidence that their products actually do what their labels purport to do. “It’s the Wild West right now,” David Hibbett, a professor of biology at Clark University, told us in our January 2024 story about the booming market of mushroom supplements like chaga and lion’s mane. “The evidence is still very, very limited and, certainly in my mind, does not warrant the very strong marketing of these products as nutritional supplements.”
2) Not everyone should take them—even multivitamins.
I grew up thinking that taking a multivitamin a day was the epitome of health, but this isn’t true for everyone, we reported in June 2023—and you should consult a doctor before you start a daily multivitamin regimen.
There are a few reasons why. For one, multivitamins can interfere with certain drugs like antibiotics or blood thinners. Additionally, people with liver or kidney disease might not be able to efficiently clear the high levels of nutrients contained in a multivitamin. Finally, it’s possible for anyone to get too much of a good thing. (More on this in a bit.)
Ultimately, as with everything, it comes down to your individual needs.
(Are vitamin C supplements overrated?)
3) The body doesn’t break all vitamins down the same way.
But it’s not just your own personal health factors to keep in mind. Some vitamins are also absorbed differently in the body—which can make a big difference in deciding whether to take them.
Experts warned in a story we published in November 2023 to be particularly careful with vitamins A and E because they are fat-soluble. This means that the body stores these nutrients in your liver and fatty tissues for future use rather than quickly breaking them down and metabolizing them as it does for other types of vitamins. Large doses of either one could actually harm you.
4) It’s possible to overdo it.
As I’ve been alluding to here, there is such a thing as vitamin toxicity—or consuming so much of these nutrients that they actually begin to harm rather than help you.
Take, vitamin A, for example: Exceeding the daily upper intake limit of 3,000 micrograms can ultimately cause issues like joint pain, liver damage, and birth defects. High doses of vitamin E can interfere with blood clotting, causing hemorrhages, among other issues. And an excess of vitamin D can cause nausea, muscle weakness, confusion, vomiting, and dehydration.
(Some vitamins and minerals actually work better when eaten together.)
5) Food is the best way to get nutrients.
Many nutrients like collagen and vitamin C are already abundant in the foods that make up a typical diet—and eating whole, unprocessed foods, such as fiber-rich vegetables and fruit, is often a more efficient way to get the vitamins, minerals, and probiotics your body needs, Cleveland Clinic nutritionist Gail Cresci told us in March 2023. “Taking a probiotic or a probiotic supplement,” she said, “isn’t going to fix a bad diet.”
