Some of you guys more advanced in body chemistry, knowledge of digestion, etc may be able to help with this.
If you look on the ingredients of a multi Vitamin, it has a day’s worth or more of the amount of multiple types of vitamins you are suppose to ingest daily, based off the FDA daily value. For example, the Vitamin A content of the MV that i take is listed as 10K iu or 200% of the recommended daily value.
So my question is, can my body absorb and use that much Vitamin A at one time? Wouldnt it use what it needs and secrete the rest? From what i know, excess isnt stored in a holding tank for later usage right?
So wouldnt i be better off taking 1 multi in the morning and 1 in the evening or half AM/half PM? Same with any other supplement? So instead of taking 3 fish oil caps at once, take 1, 3 times a day?
Im not worried about wasting money. I am just curious if our bodies would respond better to multiple absorptions throughout a 24 hour day that way you are providing your body with valuable nutrients at different times instead of all at once every 24 hours.
Multivitamins often get knocked for having generally poor bioavailability.
Fat soluble vitamins (vitamin D, for instance) are a bit more forgiving about the timing of dosage than water soluble vitamins (vit c) which tend to move through your system fairly quickly.
… I’ve more than exhausted my expertise. I don’t sweat it that much, and view my multi as cheap insurance.
The answer would be tough to give for many reasons that I don’t care to get into in detail. For example, you’d have to consider that for fat soluble vitamins, your body can store them.
As far as how often you need to take certain vitamins (mostly water soluble ones), I believe most research would support spreading out the dose as much as possible would be beneficial, but besides how much you can absorb at once, there are also things like the form of the vitamin (synthetic vs natural vitamins, chelated minerals vs non, etc) and also there are certain nutrient interactions that you have to consider (some decrease absorption of one, and I think that others have potential to increase the absorption of others). You also have to ask yourself the question: “What’s in a good multi and are all the same?”.
Do a little research (see below) and you might be able to find out a good deal more info than I provided.
A more important question, to me at least, is how much of that hard machine-compressed filler-loaded multi vitamin is actually getting absorbed and used by your body at all?
I’ve seen some references that suggest that if the vitamin pill/tablet/capsule does not disolve in water within about 15 minutes or so it will not get processed in your stomach/intestines and pass through your system to the colon intact without any nutritional benefit whatsoever.
I’m sure there are other opinions on this but it is certainly food for thought.
Bulletprooftiger is right, its best to spread them out as much as possible.
Water soluble ones just need to be taken with water, while fat soluble ones should be taken with a little bit of fat. here’s my daily vitamin regimen:
B-50 complex (half a pill in morning on empty stomach and other half at night)
1000 mg Vit. C (half in morning and half at night)
4000 IU Vit. D (taken at my first meal, since I fast)
400 IU Vit. E (taken with first meal)
I notice that my urine is a bit more yellowish since I’ve started taking B-50, but thats from the riboflavin.
About the “pissing your vitamins out” mantra: Thats quite a normal thing. When the vitamins are in your body they are doing their job. Once they’ve been used up, then they’re gotten rid of.