Jan 23rd 2024
Conventional Multi Lowers Cancer Risk and Improves Memory
. . . if a low-quality multi can make a difference, imagine what our multi could do!
It always seems to make headlines when a multivitamin performs below expectations. There are, of course, lots of reasons why conventional multis might do this (I’ll get to that later), but two recent studies that failed to make headlines validated the benefit of taking even a conventional multi. Both doubled-blind, placebo-controlled (the gold-standard in science), the first found that taking a daily multi lowered cancer rates by 8% in male doctors; in the second, a daily multi helped older women improve their cognitive abilities.
In the cancer study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), more than 14,000 male doctors over the age of 50 were given either a conventional multivitamin or a placebo, and their health was tracked for an average of 11 years. Risk for overall cancers was 8% lower in the group taking a multi, a statistically significant result.
In the memory study, 41 women between the ages of 64 and 79 with memory complaints were given either a multi or a placebo for 16 weeks. Those taking the multi improved their performance on tests of their memory, while the placebo group did not.
I wish Beyond Health could afford to sponsor studies. Unfortunately it’s the large drug companies who manufacture low-quality multis that can afford to pay for studies, while small companies like ours, dedicated to producing multivitamins of the highest quality while keeping prices down as much as we can, cannot. However I know without a doubt that our multi would far surpass these results if put to the test. Beyond Health's multi contains the correct biologically active forms of the molecules along with the cofactors necessary to obtain the highest biological activity in the body.
The differences between a multivitamin like ours and conventional multis is night and day. The nutrients in our multi are in the same forms found in foods, so the body recognizes them, and they are highly bioavailable and biologically active. Conventional supplements, on the other hand, supply nutrients in synthetic forms that supply molecules with the wrong shape, do not match the body's needs, and can even be harmful. We supply the co-factors needed to process these nutrients, and our multi is free of contaminants that could interfere with the beneficial effect of the nutrients and/or add to your toxic load. Conventionally made supplements lack co-factors and burden your body with impurities.
So it’s no big surprise when conventional multivitamins fail to demonstrate hoped for results. However in these two cases, even conventional multis made measurable differences in health outcomes, showing the need for and the benefits to be gained from nutrient supplementation.