I started taking multivitamins somewhat recently to get additional iron, vitamin B12, and vitamin D (I’m vegan).
In men iron more iron is generally associated with worse health outcomes, so why would you do that? (see Tim Ferriss The Four Hour body for more discussion where he recommends blood donations to reduce the iron content of the blood).
Taking these supplements was partially informed by this post, though I have been taking creatine on and off for quite a while.
The post doesn’t mention iron at all, so why?
Generally, we find that in people who eat a normal diet (some poor people don’t count in that category) multivitamin supplement don’t improve health outcomes. While there’s a case for vegan’s supplementing B12 (and for everyone who doesn’t spend multiple hours outside every day with a lot of uncovered skin surface to take Vitamin D), there’s no evidence that broader multivitamins are useful.
Aside from that multivitamins usually don’t contain Vitamin D in amounts that the people who recommend Vitamin D usually recommend.
If we assume that some of the vitamins are indeed healthy to supplement that leads to the hypothesis that others are harmful.
One key post that layed out the thesis of chromium/manganese being unhealthy was Most multivitamins have these 2 toxic minerals in them and there’s a good chance that’s the source for Eliezer believing that those things are unhealthy.
The iodine comment is confusing, but not clearly wrong. I experienced low thyroid levels that were likely due to excess iodine from kelp powder. But I wouldn’t worry about getting too much iodine from a multivitamin.
I’m currently taking chromium supplements, due to a test result showing I had below average levels, plus the advice of someone whose opinion I trust a lot more than I trust Louie’s opinion.
He was at the time one of the MIRI people, one of EY’s co-workers so it’s reasonable to believe that’s where Eliezer’s beliefs come from. Of course, the discussion might also happened first and then Louie wrote it up, but that’s basically where the belief comes from.
I’m uncertain to what extend the claim is actually true. There’s some further LessWrong discussion that you could dig up from the achieves. As my memory goes, that further discussion also didn’t clearly resolve the question for me.
My personal philosophy with supplements is “Only take supplements when you have a good reason to believe that they are good for you, or you have a way to query your intuition for whether you need it (with Magnesium supplements sometimes I feel like having one and other times I don’t and consider that a signal based on which to make decisions)”.
Iron deficiency is more common without animal sources. Given my diet, I think being iron deficient is considerably more likely than having too much iron. I haven’t done a blood test. I also don’t have any strong intuition if it is better to have too much or too little iron (my prior would be that too little is worse).
A related question, should manganese rich foods also be avoided? For example, just a few slices of whole wheat bread have a similar manganese content to a typical supplement (100% daily value or 2.3 mg).
On the whole, this comment has resulted in a very small update for me against taking multivitamins (mostly from the “Supplements have some beneficial components, but also some detrimental/poisonous ones and so their overall effect is net neutral or slightly negative” hypothesis). The net update is small because that link about chromium/manganese triggers my quackery alarms quite strongly.
You are almost certainly getting enough iron in your diet as a person who (presumably) doesn’t menstruate. If you are not feeling fatigued or dizzy on the regular, you almost certainly have enough iron. If you are worried, get a blood test, don’t just supplement willy-nilly.
I would recommend you do a food diary for 3 days and enter into chronometer or myfitnsespal. You are probably getting 10-15mg of iron a day and the RDI for adult men is 8mg. Yes, vegans get non-heme iron, but the iron in meat is something like 80% non-heme, so most people actually get a very small amount of heme iron, and diet tends to have no impact on iron intake.
I speak generally as I don’t know what your diet looks like: if you eat pizza pockets and ben & jerrys for every meal then you have bigger problems than your multivitamin.
I’m a vegan doing a nutrition degree (at an accredited university, not at one of those woo-woo online holistic centres). I also have low iron because I have dysmennorhea, which I assume you can’t suffer from.
Definitely take b12 and take D if you don’t get sun (you probably don’t). Make sure you are getting vegan D if that’s important to you, most D is not vegan. Also make sure the D is an appropriately high dose, not the very low doses that are in multivitamins.
In men iron more iron is generally associated with worse health outcomes, so why would you do that? (see Tim Ferriss The Four Hour body for more discussion where he recommends blood donations to reduce the iron content of the blood).
The post doesn’t mention iron at all, so why?
Generally, we find that in people who eat a normal diet (some poor people don’t count in that category) multivitamin supplement don’t improve health outcomes. While there’s a case for vegan’s supplementing B12 (and for everyone who doesn’t spend multiple hours outside every day with a lot of uncovered skin surface to take Vitamin D), there’s no evidence that broader multivitamins are useful.
Aside from that multivitamins usually don’t contain Vitamin D in amounts that the people who recommend Vitamin D usually recommend.
If we assume that some of the vitamins are indeed healthy to supplement that leads to the hypothesis that others are harmful.
One key post that layed out the thesis of chromium/manganese being unhealthy was Most multivitamins have these 2 toxic minerals in them and there’s a good chance that’s the source for Eliezer believing that those things are unhealthy.
I’m so surprised by the complaint about iodine in that link that it makes it hard to take the rest seriously. Is this guy not a crank?
The iodine comment is confusing, but not clearly wrong. I experienced low thyroid levels that were likely due to excess iodine from kelp powder. But I wouldn’t worry about getting too much iodine from a multivitamin.
I’m currently taking chromium supplements, due to a test result showing I had below average levels, plus the advice of someone whose opinion I trust a lot more than I trust Louie’s opinion.
He was at the time one of the MIRI people, one of EY’s co-workers so it’s reasonable to believe that’s where Eliezer’s beliefs come from. Of course, the discussion might also happened first and then Louie wrote it up, but that’s basically where the belief comes from.
I’m uncertain to what extend the claim is actually true. There’s some further LessWrong discussion that you could dig up from the achieves. As my memory goes, that further discussion also didn’t clearly resolve the question for me.
My personal philosophy with supplements is “Only take supplements when you have a good reason to believe that they are good for you, or you have a way to query your intuition for whether you need it (with Magnesium supplements sometimes I feel like having one and other times I don’t and consider that a signal based on which to make decisions)”.
Iron deficiency is more common without animal sources. Given my diet, I think being iron deficient is considerably more likely than having too much iron. I haven’t done a blood test. I also don’t have any strong intuition if it is better to have too much or too little iron (my prior would be that too little is worse).
A related question, should manganese rich foods also be avoided? For example, just a few slices of whole wheat bread have a similar manganese content to a typical supplement (100% daily value or 2.3 mg).
On the whole, this comment has resulted in a very small update for me against taking multivitamins (mostly from the “Supplements have some beneficial components, but also some detrimental/poisonous ones and so their overall effect is net neutral or slightly negative” hypothesis). The net update is small because that link about chromium/manganese triggers my quackery alarms quite strongly.
Why do you believe that?
You are almost certainly getting enough iron in your diet as a person who (presumably) doesn’t menstruate. If you are not feeling fatigued or dizzy on the regular, you almost certainly have enough iron. If you are worried, get a blood test, don’t just supplement willy-nilly.
I would recommend you do a food diary for 3 days and enter into chronometer or myfitnsespal. You are probably getting 10-15mg of iron a day and the RDI for adult men is 8mg. Yes, vegans get non-heme iron, but the iron in meat is something like 80% non-heme, so most people actually get a very small amount of heme iron, and diet tends to have no impact on iron intake.
I speak generally as I don’t know what your diet looks like: if you eat pizza pockets and ben & jerrys for every meal then you have bigger problems than your multivitamin.
I’m a vegan doing a nutrition degree (at an accredited university, not at one of those woo-woo online holistic centres). I also have low iron because I have dysmennorhea, which I assume you can’t suffer from.
Definitely take b12 and take D if you don’t get sun (you probably don’t). Make sure you are getting vegan D if that’s important to you, most D is not vegan. Also make sure the D is an appropriately high dose, not the very low doses that are in multivitamins.