Put your Multivitamin to the test!

I promised an article on how to tell if your multivitamin is worth the money you spend on it, and here it is!

I'm going to briefly touch on what to look for if you do decide to purchase a daily multivitamin and give you a few tips if you already picked one out to see if its really doing it's job.

First, when you are picking a multivitamin look for a capsule, liquid, or powder if you can find it.  Some of the multivitamin tablets are literally as hard as a rock (I'll touch on this a little more later in the tests).  A capsule (a   clear gelatin pill filled with powder), a liquid, or a powder will all be more easily assimilated than a tablet.  Your body has to reduce everything into a liquid before it can begin to absorb and assimilate the nutrients, so the closer your vitamin starts out to a liquid the better chance it has at getting into your blood stream.

Second, try to to pick out a multivitamin that is either a 2 a day or 3 a day formula.  Your body can only process so much of a vitamin at once, if everything floods in in one dose your body will simply use what it needs and flush the rest.  By spacing out doses into 2 or 3 times a day you have a much better chance of getting the vitamins into your blood.  This is especially true with water soluble vitamins like the B vitamins and vitamin C.  Your body readily flushes extra B vitamins when they can't be used... Don't believe me?  Watch your urine 2 or 3 hours after waking up and taking your vitamin.  That bright green color is the result of a lot of those B vitamins being flushed away! 

Third, look for a multivitamin with added ingredients other than just vitamins.  Many multivitamins now come with things like lutein, lycopene, ginseng, ginkgo bilboa, digestive enzymes, and even branched chain amino acids added into the mix.  These may cost a little more but the quality is usually higher as well.

Now for the 3 tests you can use to see if your multivitamin is really helping you!!

1)  Get one of your multivitamins and place it 1/4 cup of vinegar.  Wait 5 minutes and return.  Swish the cup around a little bit and see if it is dissolved or if it is still in a chunk or chunks.  If there is a fine mixture at the bottom, then you may have a good multivitamin, if its still in one piece chances are its not digesting properly.

2)  Place your multivitamin on a plate and grab a large spoon from the silverware drawer.  If you can easily crush the vitamin with minimal force into a fine powder you may have a good multivitamin.  If it takes a hammer to grind it down, you may need a new multivitamin.

3)  This is the bonus round!  Place one of your multivitamins in 1/4 cup of water this time.  Leave it for 5 minutes and return.  This test is the same as the first test but if your multivitamin completely dissolves in water after 5 minutes you can be pretty confident its dissolving in your stomach, since stomach acid is much more acidic than water.

If anyone is up to the challenge It would be awesome for someone to perform these tests and reply with, or send me a video of them being performed and I will gladly attach it to the blog.  Hopefully this will give you a little bit of insight on what to look for when shopping for a quality multivitamin.  I personally purchase my multivitamins from trueprotein.com  I get a 3 month supply of a capsule vitamin for less than 40$ with shipping included.  Happy hunting, and if you do have to use a hammer to break up your current multivitamin please wear goggles!

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Posted in: mma meal plan,Supplements