[arcticbull]

> For me it is proof enough that my wise mother told me take my vitamins.

That's not proof of anything.

> There are thresholds for deficiency. There are optimal levels.

And there are levels that cause toxicity.

> Supplements can help with that.

[citation needed] which is kind of the point of this article.

> ...and easier and cheaper than a diet which includes all necessities. Low levels are suboptimal for you. Makes sense?

Unless your diet already has you covered, in which case it's strictly harder and more expensive.

Again, you should look for evidence of improvement, that's what the scientific process is all about. I encourage you to embrace the scientific process and take a data driven approach to whether ingesting something is going to help, harm, or have no impact on you at all, instead of just listening to your mom. My mom is a saint, but she's not right about everything.

Worse yet, because multivitamins like all nutritional supplements are not regulated by the FDA, they can range from totally ineffective to half decent, but you have no way of really knowing. The most common magnesium supplement I've found on Amazon is only 19% bioavailable [1] as compared to a best-in-class 90%. Where does your multivitamin rank? That's just one specific example.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683096/

[doublekill]

I just did. The research is divided into two: those that look at clinical outcomes (such as cardiac arrest) do not find that vitamins help. Those that look at quality of life indicators, recovery, infection severity, and muscle strength do find significant improvements of supplementation.

And they find no harm of normal use, but warn against dangerous toxicity effects of overdosing.

[arcticbull]

Without any regulation how do you know how effective your particular multivitamin is at making bioavailable any given vitamin or mineral, re: the study I posted showing a range of 19% to over 90% for magnesium? It's pretty much impossible to know if they do anything at all. Which brings me back to my point: if you have a specific issue, a specific supplement whose effectiveness if validated is likely way cheaper and much more effective -- otherwise, the advice I would give anyone is to eat their greens and stop fretting.