The claimEvidence A · guideline-tier
Take a multivitamin daily 'just in case'
The evidence
In the PHS-II trial, a multivitamin did nothing for cardiovascular disease and cut total cancer by just 8%. The gap was never a pill.
The mechanism, in brief
If your diet is roughly in order, the daily multivitamin mostly has nothing to do. In decades of large randomized trials, it did not give healthy people less heart disease, and for cancer only one trial, in male doctors, saw a very small drop.
Sources (1)
- US Preventive Services Task Force. (2022). Vitamin, mineral, and multivitamin supplementation to prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer: recommendation statement. JAMA, 327(23), 2326–2333.