Vitamin and Mineral Supplements for Men

More than half the adults in America regularly use multivitamins and other supplements to boost their immune systems and enhance nutrition, supporting an industry worth more than $20 billion annually. Grocers stock every conceivable vitamin, mineral, and herbal “boost,” and every neighborhood seems to have its own supplement store.

So are vitamins and mineral supplements for men really necessary?

Based on the current evidence, the answer is a definitive “no.” “For me,” says Christian Gluud, MD, a vitamin researcher at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, “the simple answer is don’t use them.”

“Except for certain defined population groups,” says Irwin H. Rosenberg, MD, director of the nutrition and NeuroCognition Laboratory at Tufts University, “there is no evidence that supplemental vitamins and minerals are beneficial for your health.” He goes on to tell WebMD, “There is no indication that a poor diet is going to be made into a good diet by taking multivitamins.”

Vitamin and mineral supplements can lead to early death

It’s not just that vitamin and mineral supplements provide little benefit for the healthy middle-aged man. Large doses of the pills can actually make you sick and reduce your lifespan. A review of 68 randomized trials of high-dose antioxidant supplements such as vitamins C and E found a 5% higherrisk of death in those who took them. The study, published in February in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Gluud is the lead author), found an even greater risk of death for vitamin users in a subset of 47 carefully conducted trials.

At first glance, this seems contradictory. Over the past three decades, many studies have found that eating fresh fruits and vegetables, which contain high amounts of antioxidants and other vitamins and minerals, can add years to a healthy life. But there are obviously components of a healthy lifestyle that can’t be bottled.

“Multivitamins are not a shortcut,” Gluud says. “You’re better off eating a varied diet instead of risking the increased mortality of taking these supplements.”

Multivitamins and the middle-aged man

To be sure, vitamin supplements can be beneficial for certain groups of people. After the age of 55 or so, your body starts to lose the capacity to make vitamin D from sunshine, and adding a vitamin D pill may be a good idea. The elderly also lose the ability to absorb vitamin B12 from their diet, and some of this deficiency can be met by taking a B12 supplement. Cancer patients, or people eating fewer than 1,000 calories a day, may have vitamin deficiencies. Vegans may need some B vitamins and iron unless they are meticulous about getting these nutrients from their diet.

“There really is no strong evidence to support the need of the average 35- to 55-year-old man to take a multivitamin,” says Cheryl Rock, MD, professor of nutrition in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. “If you’re concerned about your nutritional levels, a doctor can order tests. It is quite easy to find out, for example, if you are deficient in B12 or vitamin D. And usually one visit with a dietician will be covered by health insurance.”

So far, the evidence of benefit, and harm, from supplements comes from careful studies of large doses of particular vitamins and minerals. There is almost no evidence of health effects from multivitamins. Taking a once-a-day vitamin pill is probably as harmless as it is pointless, except for the manufacturer that can produce a bottle of pills for a few cents and market it for $9.99, nutrition experts say.