WALK into any Malaysian pharmacy and the supplement aisle alone could give a person an existential crisis.
Vitamin C for immunity. Vitamin D for bones. Fish oil for the brain. Multivitamins for everything else and possibly also good luck.
Malaysians have taken to supplements with remarkable enthusiasm, with 71% of us reportedly taking them and collectively spending billions of ringgit a year on the industry. But is any of it actually doing anything? Does taking vitamins every day actually make you healthier?
Verdict:
FALSE, BUT
For most healthy Malaysians eating regular meals, the honest answer is that a daily multivitamin is doing considerably less than the packaging suggests.
The science on this is surprisingly clear.
A major review that examined 84 of the highest quality clinical trials ever conducted on vitamins and minerals concluded that for healthy adults without any known nutritional gaps, supplements provide no meaningful protection against heart disease, cancer or dying earlier than expected.
A separate long-term study that followed nearly 400,000 generally healthy adults for more than 20 years finds that people who take daily multivitamins do not live any longer than those who do not.
So where is all that money going?
Largely into what scientists politely describe as "excretion," which is their way of saying the body takes what it needs from food and quietly disposes of everything extra.
The important caveat, however, is the phrase "healthy adults without known nutritional gaps."
Because if someone genuinely is deficient in a specific vitamin or mineral, supplementing that gap absolutely makes a real difference.
Vitamin D deficiency is extremely common in Malaysia despite the country sitting directly under the sun for 365 days a year, simply because most Malaysians spend the bulk of their waking hours inside air-conditioned offices and shopping malls.
Low vitamin D is linked to weakened bones, persistent fatigue and reduced immune function, and in that case a supplement genuinely helps.
Iron deficiency is common among women and young children, and vitamin B12 deficiency is widespread among vegetarians and vegans, since B12 is found almost exclusively in meat, fish and dairy.
The problem is that most Malaysians reaching for vitamins are not doing so because a doctor identified a specific deficiency after a blood test.
A peer-reviewed study drawing on the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey 2014 finds that the most common reasons Malaysians take supplements are for general health, to boost energy and for beauty, not because anything is actually missing.
Senior lecturer at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Clinical Psychology and Behavioural Health Programme Dr Shazli Ezzat Ghazali put it plainly in an interview with Bernama.
"These nutrients can be obtained from the food we eat and by practising a healthy lifestyle without taking supplements, except in the case of people who have to take them on the advice of their doctor," Dr Shazli said.
There is one area where the research tells a genuinely different story, however.
Three large-scale studies, including research run by Harvard Medical School involving more than 5,000 participants, find that daily multivitamins in older adults significantly improve memory and slow cognitive decline, with researchers estimating the effect is the equivalent of making the brain about two years younger compared to those taking a placebo.
So for older Malaysians worried about keeping the mind sharp, the science is actually quite encouraging.
For everyone else, the single most useful thing a person can do before spending another ringgit on supplements is to get a blood test and find out what, if anything, is actually missing.
Because there is genuinely no point taking vitamin D if the body already has enough, and there is a very good chance it does.
Source: quickcheck-does-taking-vitamins-daily-make-you-healthier
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