There was a time when I was much more categorical in my views on vitamins. It bothered me that almost every life situation seemed to end with a recommendation to buy another supplement. Feeling tired? Take vitamins. Getting sick often? Take vitamins. Pregnant? Take vitamins. Had a baby? Take even more vitamins. Humanity somehow survived for hundreds of thousands of years, and then suddenly it turned out that we can no longer function without a dozen bottles of capsules.
Today I look at the issue less emotionally, but my skepticism has not disappeared. It is simply directed not at vitamins themselves, but at overly simplistic answers.
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Why the Topic Is So Confusing
The problem is that the word “vitamins” often refers to very different things.
There are people with genuine deficiencies for whom supplements can be essential. There are pregnant women, for whom folic acid has one of the strongest evidence bases in modern medicine. There are older adults, people with malabsorption disorders, certain medical conditions, or highly restricted diets.
And then there is a multi-billion-dollar industry that sells supplements to almost everyone regardless of their diet, lifestyle, or health status.
This is where much of the confusion comes from. Scientific studies often focus on specific groups of people and specific health conditions, while marketing transforms those findings into a simple message: “Everyone needs this.”
My Experience During Pregnancy
During pregnancy, I was prescribed a standard set of supplements in standard doses. Naturally, this raised a question: are all pregnant women really the same?
At the time, I was living in the United Arab Emirates, where sunshine is abundant throughout the year. Yet vitamin D was automatically included among the recommendations. It felt odd.
Later, I learned that reality is more complicated than intuition. Even in sunny countries, vitamin D deficiency can be surprisingly common due to indoor lifestyles, work environments, sun protection habits, clothing, and other factors. The mere presence of sunlight outside does not guarantee adequate vitamin D levels.
At the same time, large systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials have shown that for most healthy people with normal vitamin D levels, the benefits of supplementation are far more modest than once hoped. Over the past two decades, vitamin D has been proposed as a possible solution to everything from depression to cardiovascular disease. Science, however, has turned out to be more cautious.
Why Studies So Often Seem to Contradict One Another
The more scientific papers I read, the more often I encountered familiar phrases: “insufficient evidence,” “mixed results,” and “further research is needed.”
At first, this was frustrating. It felt as though science could never provide a clear answer.
Eventually, I realized that this is exactly how honest science works. It offers certainty far less often than we would like.
For example, studies generally show that multivitamins provide little measurable benefit for most healthy people. At the same time, specific vitamins can be extremely important for certain populations. This is a far less exciting headline than either “vitamins save lives” or “vitamins are useless,” but it is much closer to reality.
Should Everyone Get Tested?
The idea of taking a blood test before using any supplement sounds appealing. In practice, things are more complicated.
For some nutrients, testing can be useful. For others, tests are expensive, not always informative, or not recommended for routine screening. This is why healthcare professionals often rely not only on laboratory values but also on risk factors, symptoms, and the characteristics of specific patient groups.
That does not mean people should blindly accept every recommendation. But neither does it mean that every recommendation is the result of pharmaceutical marketing.
Natural Does Not Always Mean Better
At one point, I became fascinated by the idea that everything we need should be obtainable naturally. It is an appealing concept. The problem is that human life has long ceased to be “natural” in the prehistoric sense.
We work indoors, spend long hours sitting, live in cities, travel between climates, rely on artificial lighting, and often eat very differently from our ancestors.
For that reason, the phrase “it is better to get everything naturally” is not always a complete answer. Sometimes it is possible. Sometimes it is not.
So, Should We Take Supplements?
The more I learn about vitamins, the less I believe in universal rules.
I do not think everyone needs supplements. But I also do not think all supplements are a scam.
What concerns me most is not the existence of supplements themselves, but the culture of thoughtless consumption. The same culture that first creates anxiety and then sells a solution in the form of another capsule.
Perhaps the most important question is not “Which vitamins should I buy?” but rather “Why do I want to buy them in the first place?” If the answer is based on a documented deficiency, medical advice, or a specific health need, that is one thing. If it is driven solely by advertising or the fear of missing out, that is something entirely different.
Sources
- Harvard Health Publishing – Multivitamins: What the Experts Say
https://www.health.harvard.edu - Vitamin D and Health Outcomes: Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8609267/ - The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: Vitamin D Status and Ill Health
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29102433/ - U.S. Preventive Services Task Force – Vitamin and Mineral Supplements for Prevention of Disease
https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org - National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements
https://ods.od.nih.gov
