The Big Problem with Multivitamin Pills - The Benefits of Capsules Over Tablets

If you take a multivitamin pill we strongly believe you need to read this article especially if you buy tablets or one a day products.

The market today is literally jam packed of various types of multivitamin pills that claim to offer everything. More often than not multi vitamin pills that are dressed up to look like something very special in reality offer very little. In fact consumers will often spend way over the odds on vitamin pills, even those costing less than £10.

The problem is actually very straight forward; millions of multivitamin pills on the market today are designed to be as cheap as possible giving the vitamin companies the greatest profits possible. It’s true to say that in some cases very little, if any, thought has gone into the formulation, and perhaps more importantly the quality of the ingredients. As long as the vitamin pill provides 100% of the vitamin and minerals we’re fine aren’t we? Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Even though many vitamin and mineral products do provide 100% they are not necessarily absorbed or utilised by the human body effectively. For example nearly every single vitamin pill you can buy in a supermarket will contain either zinc oxide or zinc sulphate, both proven to be poorly absorbed by the human body. The same is true for other forms of minerals like Iron and Magnesium.

Another problem with multivitamin pills is the fact that many are made using high compression tablet machines. These machines work at amazing speeds making millions of pills a day. The trouble is to make all of the ingredients in a vitamin pill stick together to make the tablet they have to add fillers and additives (a bit like glue). The resulting tablets are more difficult for your body to absorb compared to capsules and in some cases can pass straight through the entire digestive system. Add to this the fact the manufacturing process develops heat which causes some degradation to the tablets, tablets are clearly not the best choice for the person seeking the highest quality.

The downside to one a day multivitamin tablets.
Unlike more expensive capsules tablets do not have a protective barrier, unless specially coated, are susceptible to the damaging effects of air and moisture that can dramatically shorten the shelf life of the vitamins.

The problems continue with one a day tablets. Ask yourself if you think your body is designed to take all of its daily vitamin and minerals all at once? The answers is no, many vitamins, especially B vitamins, are water soluble and will simply go in and out of your system very quickly. B vitamins are essential for your body to effectively release energy from the food you eat, if you take a one day tablet in the morning for example with breakfast how can that benefit the other two meals you’ll eat later in the day? The same is true of water soluble antioxidants and other key nutrients. A solution is to take a multi vitamin that’s been designed to be taken throughout the day. However this adds significantly to the production costs, for example making one tablet versus a state of the art three capsule serving; first capsules are expensive, you need to make three times as many and count/pack three times as many making it an expensive option. However, a vitamin product taken three times a day with each meal makes sound scientific sense which your body will derive most benefit from.

As you can probably tell all of these problems are associated with cost and are not due to the limitation of current technology. The important thing to realise is that it’s perfectly possible to make a very biologically active and effective vitamin pill; it’ll just cost more for the vitamin company to make. Either you’ll be charged more or the vitamin company will have to make less profit. The saying “you get what you pay for” couldn’t be more apt.

At Reflex Nutrition we decided from the outset to manufacture the best quality multivitamin product money can buy, that was nearly 10 years ago, today it’s even more sophisticated with the latest ultra high quality ingredients all contained within a capsule that contains no added fillers or binders, is made with state of the art pharmaceutical grade machinery, dissolves in just a few minutes and is taken 3 times a day. It is by no means the cheapest multi vitamin, but it certainly represent incredible value for money.