About Multivitamins Absorption

[steindd]

Hello there,

I'm trying to understand how much of the nutrients are really absorved by the body in this multivitamins. By MultiV I mean those that have most of the nutrients needed daily.

Is it known if these nutrients go through absorption and are used by the body?
Or, on the contrary, it is suspected that none of it is absorbed.

Also, would you know if it's possible to measure the amount of nutrients that are absorbed in a pill like this? I tried to find a scientific article that would talk about this, but much of them are just confusing.

Please share some insights on this topic.

[deksman2]

It largely depends on what forms were Vitamins and minerals made.

For example... Vitamin D is best to take as D3 (not D2).
Vitamin C absorption is only about 20% if done as ascorbic acid and other forms... the only form of Vitamin C which seems to be best absorbed is Liposomal Vitamin C which seems to achieve about 95% absorption into the body due to Liposomes which protect C from the harshness of the gut and deliver it to the cells.

In terms of Zinc... only Zinc Picolinate demonstrated in peer-reviewed studies elevated levels of Zinc after long term supplementation - no other form of Zinc did that.

In addition, Copper Sebacate also showed that it seems to be the most bioavailable form - though the info on this is a bit sketchy.

Additionally, Vitamin K2 is best taken as MK-7 form ... all other forms of K are not really useful to the body.

Selenium seems to be best absorbed as L-Selenomethionine form.

B vitamins in most multivitamins are well absorbed if I'm not mistaken.


I saw elevated Vitamin levels across the board after using NOW FOODS ADAM Superior Men's Multi (180 Softgels).

But I also made sure to take Zinc Picolinate 50mg separately as well as Copper Sebacate (3mg).


Even this multi-vitamin that I'm taking is not really using the best possible forms of all vitamins or balanced dosages (for example, most B vitamins are exceedingly high - they would do ok to be reduced by about 20% AT LEAST - leaving room to enhance the dosage of  K2 as MK-7, then switch Zinc to Picolinate form and increase the dosage to say 30mg... accompanied by 3mg of copper, etc. - although, copper and zinc are best taken separately, I've noticed these effects on myself)

I'd love to try to do that though - to make a multivitamin with only the most biovailable forms which were checked to raise levels in the body by peer-reviewed studies.

Actually, you can do the check on google and pubmed.
They feature A LOT of this peer-reviewed data on which forms seem to be most bioavailable.

You can input on google something like:
Zinc picolinate bioavailability pubmed

Which leads to the first result being this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3630857

Alternatively, I guess you can check which forms of vitamins and minerals are in a specific multivitamin (before buying them) and then check peer-reviewed studies

[gymdandee]

http://experiencelife.com/article/all-about-absorption/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/expert.q.a/01/15/vitamins.absorption.jampolis/index.html?hpt=Mid

Consumer labs hasn't tested MultiV!