Dr. Oz: Why Should We Take a Daily Multivitamin & How to Choose One

Dr. Oz: Daily Multivitamins

Dr. Oz unveiled a new segment called The Daily Dose, which is dedicated to everything you need to know about vitamins and minerals. This edition was all about the daily multivitamin.

Dr. Oz said the doctors he trusted the most believe a daily multivitamin is key to health, including Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. William Li, Dr. Oz Michael Roizen, and Dr. Tieraona Low Dog.

Dr. Oz: Why Should We Take Daily Multivitamins?

Dr. Oz polled the audience and a little more than half of them were taking a multivitamin, which is close to the numbers around the country. Megan was one of the people taking one. She said she’s a busy mom who works in a school system and she has two kids (three depending on her husband’s behavior). She said she felt like a multivitamin helped her get through her day. She never used to take one, but watching Dr. Oz inspired her to start.

Dr. Oz said a lot of physicians think a multivitamin makes sense because many people cannot eat an ideal diet. An ideal diet smooths out our life and makes us healthy.

Most people eat a more typical diet, which leaves many holes. If an ideal diet is a track for a ball to fall down, like Dr. Oz demonstrated, a typical diet has holes in it, preventing the ball from going down. A multivitamin fills out the holes and makes the typical diet act like an ideal diet.

Dr. Oz: How to Choose the Right Multivitamin

Megan said she has difficulty choosing the right multivitamin. She looks for it to say “Women’s” or for the pink and purple ones, because those are probably good for her.

Dr. Oz said people should first look at the label. It’ll say what the percentage of the daily value each vitamin is in the multivitamin. For instance, vitamin E might be 60 percent, while vitamin C might be 100 percent. You want to make sure the daily value is as close to 100 percent as possible.

However, if the multivitamin says there’s 667 percent of vitamin E, that’s bad news. You don’t want more than the recommended vitamin amount. You might think more is better, like Megan did, but it’s not true.

Dr. Oz: When to Take Your Multivitamin

You also need to make sure not to take your multivitamin all at once. You want half of your multivitamin in the morning and half at night, so your body has time to absorb all of the nutrients.