The Strange Multivitamin Maze: Synergy, Absorption, and the Art of Multi Supplementation

Listen in as Dave Sherwin, the brains behind Mimi's Miracle Multi, reveals the hidden complexities of multivitamins. 

Through this episode, prepare to unlock the secrets of vitamin-mineral synergy and the surprising interactions that could revolutionize your approach to daily supplements.

Dave's expertise, shaped by rigorous research and collaboration with PhD chemists, promises to guide you through the often-conflicting studies on multivitamin benefits and absorption intricacies, ensuring you're well-equipped to make an informed decision on your vitamin regimen.

Dave Sherwin shares his holistic perspective, emphasizing the significance of diet, hydration, and detoxification—cornerstones of optimal wellness. You'll be inspired to color your plate with the full spectrum of nature's bounty and to contemplate the thoughtful selection of supplements like Mimi's Miracle Multi, designed to complement, not replace, a nutritious diet. 

Find episode links, notes and artwork at:

https://blog.dirobi.com

This show is for informational purposes only.

None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Welcome to the DiRobi Health Show, the number five best podcast according to Feedspotcom, which is kind of cool. I'm excited about it. They rank podcasts based on traffic, social media followers and freshness, and it determined this is the fifth best, and I'm pretty excited about that. By the way, feedspot is kind of a cool website. I only discovered it because of this listing, and someone told me that we were on this list and I went over and had a look at it and it's a place where you can aggregate all of your favorite stuff, whether it's blog posts, podcasts there's anything you pay attention to, or any media outlet or blogger or other creator that you like. Feedspot is an aggregator where you can enter all your favorite stuff and it'll just notify you whenever there's new content. So a nice place to kind of keep everything organized, and so, anyways, little plug for them. Anything is there kind enough to rank my site or this podcast, I mean, on their website, and a nice shot in the arm after all these years of putting out this sporadic, irregular but hopefully enjoyable and fun content. I love doing the podcast and I hope you are enjoying it as well.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Today, I want to talk to you about something that came across my radar years ago, I was competing at a fairly high level. I'd gotten very serious about triathlon. I was competing at a national level and working very hard on running, biking, swimming. That was how I was staying in shape, and I was also entering races of various sizes and distances and keeping me in terrific shape. During that time, though, I got really interested in multivitamins, because I found it very confusing. I thought you know I'm working out 15 hours a week. I'm trying to eat really well. However, I know I'm burning through all the carbs, fat, protein and phytonutrients and vitamins and minerals very quickly as well, and I wonder what the best multivitamin is for me. And that question opened up, but I think it was like two to four years between when I started looking for one and then finally actually ended up formulating one, because I just couldn't find what I wanted, which might sound bizarre, seeing as there are thousands of types of multivitamins, but today I want to talk to you about some of the challenges that I ran into, and, as basic as a multivitamin sounds, it's probably the most popularly used supplement of all. The landscape is incredibly confusing, and I'm talking about there are massive studies that conflict with each other. If you look at studies with literally hundreds of thousands of people in them, some say you got to take a multivitamin, others say they're no good, some say that they mix too many ingredients and some say they don't have enough. And some of the studies are done on aging populations and some of them are younger, some of them are men, some are done on women and it's just a mess. And I finally got to the bottom of it the best that I could and talked to a couple of PhD chemists. They came up with Mimi's Miracle Multi, but along the way I want to tell you some of the interesting things I ran into.

Speaker 1: 3:41

First of all, there are vitamins and minerals that conflict with each other Not so much in nature. When we eat an orange, we get vitamin C, and that vitamin C is readily used by the body. However, when you put vitamin C and copper in the same supplement, there's plenty of evidence that the absorption of both will go down or nullify, even be nullified. Another example is magnesium and calcium. Now, magnesium and calcium are two of the most readily available and popular supplements out there. Pretty much everyone knows what magnesium and calcium is. Not everyone knows what chromium GTF is, or iodine or some of the other zinc. We know. Magnesium, calcium, vitamin C are just. They're big ones. That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 4:32

However, magnesium and calcium should not be taken together. They also conflict with each other. Vitamin C and copper I think I mentioned that one. Magnesium shouldn't be taken with iron and zinc. And again, magnesium very popular, a lot of people are aware of it, a lot of people take it, but if you mix it in a moldy vitamin with iron and zinc, they counteract each other. Another one is CNB12. And I find that one interesting as well. Zinc and copper I can't remember if I've mentioned that one. And yet zinc for many people, if they start taking zinc, really wakes up their system. As a matter of fact, 12% of people are deficient and 40% of the elderly are too low on zinc. But if you have a multi that has everything, many of these elements are conflicting with each other and it's just not going to work the way that you hope it's going to work.

Speaker 1: 5:32

And so what we decided to do after doing all this research is we found a few very interesting things. Basically, what I decided is you know a whole lot of people when it comes to see magnesium and calcium. Those really ought to be had from diet as much as possible. You see, we should be eating 5 to 9 servings of fruits and veggies every day, and when you do, you're getting the best possible forms of magnesium and calcium. In addition, if you are low on magnesium, the best time to take it is probably in the evening as a topical. Now, if you have stomach problems, you can take a magnesium to help with your stomach. But guess what? If you aren't having a stomach problem and you swallow magnesium, you can also get the runs right, which you don't want. Magnesium taken as a topical will actually help you relax and go to sleep better, and so this is why in the Dirobi undiet, we're so big on getting your 5 to 9 servings of veggies, because you should get enough magnesium, calcium and vitamin C in their best possible forms.

Speaker 1: 6:42

And if you don't, these are very readily easy to buy supplements very, very inexpensive. I think you can buy 90 days worth of vitamin C for about 10 bucks at Costco. So if, and only if, you've had a nutritional deficiency test that shows that you're low on magnesium, calcium or C, I would not supplement with those. I just focus on getting more vitamins I'm sorry more vegetables and fruits in your diet and for me, I cheat. I love our greens and red superfood because it just covers so many of these other bases, and I don't drink my greens and red superfood with my multi because of these issues that I've just talked about. I usually have it in the afternoon, hours after I've taken my multi.

Speaker 1: 7:33

In addition, there are things that many people are not necessarily deficient on, but for people over about 30, they're fantastic to have. For example, a chromium deficiency is very hard to identify because we need it in such small amounts. 1000 MCGs that's not milligrams now, but MCGs, that's a thousand seven milligram. 1000 MCGs of chromium GTF is what's called the clinical dose for weight loss, lower cholesterol and blood sugar management. It's a very tiny amount. It's hard in a nutritional test to determine whether you have that in your body or not. However, anecdotally, we know from many, many people that when they start getting 1000 MCGs of chromium GTF every single day or more, they do very, very well. That's why we put it in our Mimi's Miracle Multi.

Speaker 1: 8:28

And so if you dive into the world of multivitamins, as I have done several times and as I revisited for this very post, generally speaking, I think what you're going to find is that most multivitamins are trying to be all things to all people, and it's a marketing ploy. They have a list of a ton of different things and the people look at it and go, wow, there's so much in here. This has got to work for me. I'm so happy I found this little white pill that has a hundred things inside of it, and boy won't I be healthy. And the fact is, you just won't, because they won't have enough of what you need. They'll have some things that conflict with each other, and those cheap ones are all going to be synthetic ingredients as well. And again, not all synthetic ingredients are unhealthy.

Speaker 1: 9:18

I've been in the supplement industry a long, long time. I know that there's purists out there that claim that no synthetic ingredient can work like what comes out of food. Now, I generally agree with that. However, again, as in many things in health, there's nuance there. Regardless, we use the highest quality product we can in every single one of our formulations, just because it is better. So I'm not here making an argument for synthetics only to say that they're not the devil that some people would say that they are, but I still avoid them.

Speaker 1: 9:51

So I don't know why I'm spending any time talking about that actually, but generally speaking, I would suggest trying to get your vitamins minerals, from a combination of a diet with the right ratio of carbs, fats, proteins that are all sourced from whole foods. You're getting many vitamins and minerals from there, getting five to nine servings of fruits and veggies a day and doing a high quality, minimal sort of formulation, like our Mimi's Miracle Multi that isn't trying to be all things to all people, but has those things that science has told us most people are deficient in and some of those things that just make you feel terrific, like Maka and Koleen and CoQ 10. So we have vitamin D3, we have K1 and K2, which, by the way, now we've talked about things that conflict. Did you know there's certain things that ought to be together, like vitamin D3, k1 and K2? Modern science has told us a lot in the last five to eight years, especially about mixing D3, k1 and K2, including people having less bone breakage, less problems with osteoarthritis, less osteoporosis, and so that's important to mix those together.

Speaker 1: 11:06

B vitamins, of course, are critical. I already talked about chromium, gtf, iodide zinc. These are some of the things that are not only important but are more important than many of the others. Our body needs all of them. However, some of these things give us more bang for the buck than others, and so that's a little bit of the story behind Mimi's Miracle Multi, as well as some of the story on why some of these other products are, you know, have so much confusing evidence behind them, why there are so many people who poo poo multivitamins, and probably for good reason.

Speaker 1: 11:47

But, generally speaking, many of these things are very, very difficult to get from food. We know this because even things like the Smithsonian has kept examples of foods and seeds that were grown in the 1800s, and we can compare the amount of minerals and vitamins in foods from 150 years ago to those grown today, and the difference is depressing. And I contend that very, very few people can optimize their health fully on food alone, and I know that's against the common wisdom and I know it shouldn't be that way. Wouldn't it be great if we just could eat three square meals a day and completely optimize our health and have all the energy and vitality and longevity that we hope for? I don't believe that is possible and that a wise supplement strategy that includes those things that are really going to work doesn't waste money on things that are going to conflict with each other or cause other problems is the ultimate strategy. It's another reason why at dirobycom, we don't have a vitamin shop full of products. We just have those things that we think will fill in those gaps.

Speaker 1: 13:04

And then we teach the undiet yes, eat whole foods. Yes, eat the right balance of carbs, proteins, fats. Yes, get your exercise in, of course. Do all of those things. However, when you supplement that with a smart supplement strategy, it'll make all the difference in the world and you can finally achieve those goals of hitting your ideal body weight, having the energy that you want, keeping up with your kids even after they are all grown up, and you still can go out and do all the fun things you want with them in your life.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Well, many, many people who are simply letting their health slide, unfortunately, and not checking off all of these daily habits and daily intakes between food and supplements that they ought to be in this modern society to both feed their body and give their body the stuff it needs to keep some of the things out of their body that they shouldn't have. We got to get all the stuff we need and we got to be able to expel the junk that we're taking in on a regular basis through our environment, pollution, plastics, chemicals, etc. And when we're firing on all cylinders and we're fully hydrated and we're getting all those things and our body is eliminating very, very well, then we have optimal health. So I hope you've enjoyed these thoughts and ideas on the conflicting research around multi and various elements and why we've constructed our Mimi's Miracle Multi the way that we have. Until next time, this is Dave Sherwin, wishing you health and success.