Why Liquid Multivitamins are Superior

By: Dr. George Obikoya

The benefits of multivitamins and minerals are more important today than ever before. In today’s hectic world, various factors such as our busy schedules and poor nutrition make it more difficult for us to eat a balanced, healthy diet. For most people, supplementing your diet with a multivitamins is now a necessity.

But do you dislike swallowing pills? Do multivitamin in tablet form disagree with you? You are not alone. Many vitamins and minerals have a naturally strong and objectionable taste. One may argue that this is a subjective consideration, for how long and how regularly will someone take a bitter tasting product? No matter how important it is to take multivitamins and how high the quality of a product is, it is useless if you cannot take it. Fortunately there are some great tasting multivitamins out there, you just have to look around.

However, you can still have your multivitamins and enjoy all the benefits derivable from them in liquid form. Research evidence suggests that only 10-20% of vitamins and minerals in a pill form are absorbed by the body, compared to 98% for liquid vitamins. This is mostly because liquid vitamins bypass the digestive process and are absorbed directly into the blood stream and into the cell. Vitamins in capsule or tablet forms, therefore, have low bioavailability, hence have weaker therapeutic benefits.

There are several other reasons why you may prefer liquid vitamins. Vitamin capsules have powdered ingredients placed into pork based gelatin or vegetable capsules with added additives such as talc or other fillers. The tablet forms of multivitamins also have powdered ingredients and additives but they are compressed into tablets using special carrier molecules and additives that require extra digestive efforts to get the desired effects.

It is not trivial to be concerned about the bases and additives used to prepare multivitamins. Many of these inert substances are carbohydrates. For obese individuals and children with a seizure disorder being treated with a ketogenic (high fat, low carbohydrate and low protein diet), even a small amount of additional carbohydrate that is not calculated into their daily diets may add up or be enough to cause a recurrence of seizure activity by pushing them out of ketosis.

Because information on the amount of inert substances in multivitamins is not easy to obtain and generally requires contact with the drug manufacturer, ask your pharmacists to help in retrieving this information.

Liquid multivitamins are much easier to swallow for children and seniors. Because these groups of individuals also have immature or attenuated digestive enzymes, it will be even more difficult to digest and assimilate vitamins in capsules or tablet forms because of the additional ingredients used to facilitate their production in these forms. For children in particular, liquid vitamins offer an array of flavors that they can choose from.

A good multivitamin is the foundation of health and nutrition. Take a look at our scientific reviews of many of the popular brands for factors such as ingredients, areas of improvement, quality level, and overall value.