Dietitian Josie Porter, author of How Not to Take Supplements, sized up ten popular supplements for the Guardian. One of the largest multivitamin trials found a memory improvement in older adults, but it came to “roughly a quarter of a word in a 20-word recall test.”
Magnesium is sold for sleep, cramps, and blood pressure, but Porter writes “the evidence is more underwhelming than the marketing” — the benefit shows up mainly in people whose intake was low. Electrolyte powders sell as a daily essential, though heavy sweating excretes only about 1 to 3 grams of salt an hour, or two pinches to half a teaspoon from the shaker.
Porter says some supplements are worth buying: psyllium husk, for constipation and diarrhea; collagen peptides, for small gains in skin elasticity, mostly in women in their 40s and 50s; and creatine, which cab be hard get enough of from food. In the UK, sunlight is too weak to make vitamin D from early October to late March, so she recommends 10 micrograms a day during those months.
Previously:
• Magnesium helps migraines but the rest of the hype is shaky
• Do multivitamins help your health? New research says nope.
• Take lots of dietary supplements? You may have increased cancer risk, says new meta-study.