A multivitamin may seem like a fairly simple concept. Just jam as many vitamins and minerals as you can into a pill small enough to swallow, right? But in reality, there is a lot more to multivitamins than you may think.
There's a lot of factors that determine whether a multivitamin is not only good or bad, but also whether it is safe or unsafe. Yes, multivitamins could potentially be unsafe! How? The first reason is because brands randomly dose the vitamins and minerals in their multivitamins.
When a brand under-doses these nutrients, then the multivitamin is not very good because your body may still NOT be getting what it needs. And when brands mega-dose these nutrients, then the body may be intaking toxic amounts. There are many products sold on the market today that have vitamins or minerals dosed at levels that exceed their respective Upper Limits (the maximum daily intake unlikely to cause adverse health effects).
Both are not ideal scenarios. A low-dosed multivitamin still leaves you susceptible to nutrient inadequacies. And when you take drastically high dosages, on top of what you are consuming in your typical diet, then you are also asking for problems. This is why your vitamins and minerals need to be dosed at the 100% RDA or AI for your specific age and sex like The Pinnacle Women's and Men's Multis, not at random dosages.
Another important thing that separates a good multivitamin from a bad one is whether or not it includes ALL the body's essential nutrients. If it is missing things like Choline, Calcium, or Chromium, then you are still susceptible to deficiencies in those missing nutrients.
However, even if a multivitamin does seem to have all the essential vitamins and minerals, that does not mean the nutrients are in their ideal form! For example, minerals have poor absorption and bioavailability rates in their regular forms found in supplements. But if a mineral is chelated, then that greatly enhances its absorption and bioavailability. There are also special ingredients out there like Bioperine® that help maximally absorb nutrients.
You also want to look at the extra ingredients that are incorporated into a multivitamin. There are many non-essential trace minerals out there that have beneficial effects in the body. Plus a lot of random ingredients that pair well with vitamins and minerals, while having their own benefits like immune health or brain health.
There's no issue with adding these extra ingredients, but most multivitamins do so in lackluster way. The problem is that they pixie dust these ingredients into the product. Which means are severely under-dosing the ingredients. They are sprinkled in the formula just so the names can be on the label. That's not how a multivitamin formula should be made in our opinion.
So if you want a women's or men's multivitamin that has all the essential vitamins and minerals your body requires, has them all dosed at the 100% RDA or AI for your specific age and sex, has superior absorption and bioavailability, and contains trace minerals and extra ingredients at the dosages shown effective in human clinical studies, then there is only 1 place to find that. Pinnacle Supplementation!