Multivitamins for Men

Many men take a daily multivitamin for “nutritional insurance” and to ensure peak performance. Multivitamins have been around for almost a century, and help fill the nutrition gaps many people experience in the 21st century.

Male multivitamins are supposedly designed to help increase testosterone levels, while female multivitamins are often marketed to help with fertility, more specifically pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Rankings

1. Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi

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Performance Lab’s multivitamin for men is specifically formulated for men’s biology. A large focus of the formulation is on B-Vitamins, which is particularly helpful to men as B-vitamins are known to help the body’s stress response. Performance Lab also provides a substantial daily dose of zinc, vitamin D, and boron which targets testosterone production, the immune system, and bones within the body.

Free of GMO, gluten, caffeine, soy, allergens, or artificial ingredients, Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi is one of the cleanest products available on the market. Healthtrends #1 choice of 2020.

2. Dr. Tobias Multivitamin & Mineral Plus Enzymes

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Dr. Tobias multivitamin formulation includes vitamins A, C, D, E and B-complex in extremely high concentrations making it ideal for those who need a larger boost towards the beginning of their supplementation use. It also contains a moderate amount of metal minerals such as magnesium and copper.

Extracts from spirulina, blueberries, and black currant boost the health benefits associated with this product by promoting anti-inflammatory responses and promoting probiotic growth in the digestive system.

3. Legion Athletics Triumph

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Like many other male multivitamins, this supplement provides a high amount of vitamin B12 at 600 mg, Zinc, Chromium and other vitamins that are known to enhance the male body.

In addition to the overall vitamin composition found in this supplement, it also provides an extremely clean formulation. There are very few additional ingredients and those that are present are based on scientific evidence showing beneficial effects on the bioavailability of the core vitamins found in this product.

4. Vimerson Health Men’s Multivitamin

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Vimerson Health’s multivitamin for men provides all of the basic building blocks found in a strong and efficient men’s multivitamin, however, it also includes an extensive blend of herbal ingredients. These herbal ingredients include palmetto and lycopene which promote overall wellness. 

Unlike other multivitamin options, this supplement combines the basics with antioxidant ingredients such as green tea extract to reduce free radicals and boost immune and anti-inflammatory health.

5. Onnit Total Human

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Total Human by Onnit provides a wide range of multivitamins and minerals in two packs: a daytime pack and a nighttime pack.

The day pack is engineered to support focus and metabolism, while the night pack help promote relaxation and sleep.

6. Controlled Labs Orange Triad

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Orange triad by Controlled Labs provides a potent multivitamin for men, packed with hefty doses of ingredients to support intense training.

It specifically includes joint blends to support heavy weight lifting and physical labor – perfect for the active male.

7. Optimum Nutrition Opt-Men Multivitamin

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With a large array of vitamins and minerals, men will find this to be more than adequate to enhance their daily vitamin intake.

There is a substantial amount of B-vitamin benefits with this supplement, as well as herbal ingredients designed specifically for the needs of the male body. 

8. Animal Pak Multivitamin for Men 

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Animal Pak’s multivitamin enhances muscle mass and supports the recovery from heavy training. As it contains massive doses of vitamins and minerals, the daily intake value is substantially higher than other supplements. 

The only drawback here is the need to take multiple vitamins per serving. This may be less than convenient for some users, especially if you don’t like to swallow pills, but it is certainly an option for those who don’t mind.

9. MuscleTech Advanced Daily Multivitamin for Men

 

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MuscleTech places a large focus on bodybuilding and fitness performance. Though this is specifically designed for the workout enthusiast, it is still a great option for others that may need an extreme boost in their vitamin intake.

MuscleTech provides a variety of trace minerals in addition to the standard base of vitamins.

10. Solimo Men’s One Daily

 

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As Amazon’s in-house brand, this supplement is easily accessible and is relatively solid in terms of efficacy and potency.

This is definitely a minimalist multivitamin, providing no more, but no less the recommended daily dose of vitamins for men.

How we rank

For men, the most important ingredients in a multivitamin are zinc and magnesium. While zinc maintains high testosterone levels, magnesium is specifically important to the testosterone production in older men. Rather than look for the presence of these minerals, we also focused on the dosage amount available for each in the various supplements. Supplements that included these ingredients in a soluble form, like Legion Athletic Triumph Multivitamin, were given more points than those that did not.

Other ingredients important in a men’s specific multivitamin include vitamins B, C and E. Supplements, like Onnit Total Human and Dr. Tobias Multivitamin that provided large doses of these specific ingredients were ranked highly. These products also took advantage of amino acid chelates rather than providing these nutrients in a form that could lead to digestive disruption. 

Supplements that ranked higher, like Vimerson, were found to include greens such as spirulina or fruit-extracts such as black currant. These antioxidants have been shown to have heart health-boosting effects as well as anti-inflammatory benefits making these supplements more desirable than those with basic formulations. While not required, supplements providing these benefits ranked higher on our list. Additionally, products that included herbal supplements were also highly ranked among the various supplements.

Finally, we penalized any supplements found to include artificial ingredients in any form. Supplements that included artificial colors, binders, fillers, or sweeteners were removed from the rankings completely to ensure the purest and most beneficial supplements possible.

Benefits

1. Multivitamins for men may help to reduce infection and sickness. Many people take multivitamins because they believe that doing so will protect them from infection, but the evidence for this is surprisingly sparse. A 2003 study looked at whether a vitamin and mineral supplement could reduce (self-reported) infection and improve well being in adults with Type II diabetes (3).

The study found a significant improvement in subjective reports on infection and a reduction in absenteeism in people who took the multivitamin supplement compared to the placebo group. The study was performed on people with type II diabetes, who are often more likely to suffer from a micronutrient deficiency – often due to poor diet.

Whether the effects would be similar to people who did not have type II diabetes was something that the authors decided should be explored further in the future. Another study looked at the effect of multivitamins and fortified milk on children in India. The study was very interesting because it looked at both healthy children and children who lived in poverty-stricken parts of India (4).

It found that children who had grown up in relatively low-risk environments (in other words they were unlikely to be malnourished) were unaffected by multivitamin use.

However, children, who had grown up in poverty saw a significant improvement in their ability to resist infection, and a big reduction in the severity of infection if they did catch something. This is a common trend with supplements, if you are deficient in a certain vitamin, mineral, or amino acid then supplementing can see a big improvement, but if you aren’t deficient, then you are not going to see any benefits.

A meta-analysis in 2005 by El-Kadiki & Sutton looked into the effect of multivitamin supplementation on infection rates in elderly people (5).

It found a lot of conflicting results among journal articles. Some, such as a 1993 study which found that there was a reduction in infection rates (6).

While others found no such evidence (7).

The meta-analysis concluded that “the evidence for routine use of multivitamin and mineral supplements to reduce infections in elderly people is weak and conflicting. Study results are heterogeneous, and this is partially confounded by outcome measure”.

The bottom line is that multivitamin use may reduce infection in people with a poor diet, but if your diet is healthy then there will be absolutely no effect on infection rate.

2. Multivitamins for men can improve memory. It may seem like an odd relationship but there have been many studies that have looked at the effect of multivitamins on memory. Multivitamin ingredients such as B12 have been shown to have a limited effect on memory and dementia and being deficient in B12 can increase your risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia (89).

Vitamin K is another common multivitamin ingredient that may improve memory (10).

A 2012 study found that multivitamin use enhanced “immediate free recall memory but no other cognitive domains” (11).

In case you were wondering, free recall is where subjects are given a list of items to remember and then asked to repeat them back to the person running the study. The items do not have to be repeated in the same order as they were written down.

Another study in 2012 found that 16 weeks of multivitamin supplementation led to an improvement in working memory in elderly women at risk of cognitive decline (12).

Two other studies, however, did not find these results. (13, 14).

After reviewing the evidence, it seems that certain types of memory (such as immediate/working memory) can be improved with multivitamin use. Though this only seems to be the case in elderly people who are at risk of dementia. Quite a few studies have posited that the cause of dementia in these people may be a deficiency in vitamin B12 or vitamin K.

As with the infection studies, if you are malnourished then you may see a benefit to your memory, but considering vitamin B12 and vitamin K are both quite easy to get through diet, very few people will see any changes to memory.

3. Multivitamins for men’s use may help prevent eyesight breakdown and loss. Many children (particularly in the UK) were often told to eat their carrots as it can help them see in the dark. This was actually something that was made up during the second world war to disguise the fact that the British had developed radar technology. But there was actually some truth behind it.

Consuming a healthy diet has been continually linked with improved vision, or rather prevention in loss of eyesight. One study found that reducing vitamin A deficiency can help to improve eyesight in children (15).

Studies on the elderly have found that multivitamin and mineral supplements can help reduce the risk of age-related cataracts (16).

A Cochrane Database System Review on antioxidant vitamin and mineral supplements found that there was sufficient evidence to state that vitamin E and beta-carotene can help prevent age-related macular degeneration, but that vitamin C did not have enough evidence backing its effectiveness (17).

An update to the study in 2017 found that multivitamin use can delay the progression of age-related macular degeneration, but that certain ingredients that are marketed at the elderly (lutein and zeaxanthin) are ineffective (18).

This backed up the findings of a 1994 study which found that carotenoids and antioxidant vitamins can “help retard some of the destructive processes in the retina and the retinal pigment epithelium that leads to age-related degeneration of the macula” (19).

Similar studies have found that increasing the consumption of foods that are high in carotenoids may help reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration (20).

Other studies have found no evidence for multivitamins being effective at preventing macular degeneration and most reviews find that there just isn’t enough evidence to support this theory. The bottom line is that multivitamins may help to slow down the inevitable, but the effect (if it exists) will be minimal. Following a diet with high levels of carotenoids may be more effective.

4. Multivitamins for men may help improve mood and reduce stress. A 2011 study on healthy older men found that a vitamin and mineral supplementation taken over 8 weeks led to improved alertness, and a reduction in negative morning moods compared to a placebo (21).

Another study in 2013 found that multivitamins led to reduced stress, fatigue, and anxiety in men taking at-home mobile-phone assessments of their mood (22).

However, in men who took the assessments at work, there was a significant increase in stress ratings. Which makes it hard to draw a conclusion from.

A study in 2000 found that a multivitamin and mineral supplement produced a statistically significant improvement in mood compared to a placebo (23).

Another study in 2002 found a significant improvement in stress reduction when taking a probiotics multivitamin compound (24).

A study in 2004 found that taking a multivitamin supplement led to improved behavior in children with mood and behavioral problems (25).

There seems to be sufficient evidence to say that multivitamins can improve mood, reduce stress, and perhaps even improve behavior. It’s not clear whether mood, stress, and behavior are negatively affected by a deficiency, or whether taking the multivitamin when not in a deficiency will improve them.

5. Multivitamins for men may help obese people lose weight. This last benefit is highly suspect but worth mentioning anyway. A study in 2010 found that giving a multivitamin to obese women led to a statistically significant reduction in body weight and body fat by increasing energy expenditure and fat oxidation, it also improved serum lipid profiles (26).

The possible reason for this could be an improvement in gut health in obese men, a population group that often suffers from bad dieting practices and a deficiency in many micronutrients. But the evidence for multivitamins improving body weight and fat levels is relatively scarce.

Side effects

1. Men’s multivitamins high in vitamin C can lead to gastrointestinal distress.

2. Men’s multivitamins with too much vitamin D (combined with calcium) may potentially lead to the formation of kidney stones (2728).

There may also be a more serious side effect, but it is quite complicated. Several studies have found a link between taking multivitamins and mortality. A 2005 study on men found that regular multivitamin use led to a small increase in prostate cancer death rates (29).

But there is no causal link to explain this, so we can assume that the relationship is due to correlation.

After reviewing the evidence, it is safe to say that taking multivitamin supplements is completely safe provided that you are not already over-consuming foods that are high in vitamins such as vitamin C and vitamin D. As to the risk of prostate cancer? There just isn’t enough evidence to support this theory and no explanation as to how it could increase risk.

3. Multivitamins for men could cause an allergic reaction. In rare instances, multivitamins for men may result in a heightened response from your body’s immune system. Those the chances of this occurring are extremely low, the source of the response is most commonly linked to an additional ingredient within the supplement rather than the vitamins and minerals included. 

Allergic reactions occur when the body’s immune system identifies a threatening substance. This response can cause a variety of symptoms ranging from a rash, hives, congestion, and abdominal discomfort to more serious cases involving an anaphylactic response. Anaphylactic reactions are life-threatening and require immediate medical intervention. Symptoms of anaphylaxis include dizziness, vomiting, rash, hives, collapse, or even death in the most extreme circumstances.

If an allergic reaction is observed, it is important to discontinue the use of the specific multivitamin and contact a trained physician for further assistance.

Recommended dosage

1 tablet per day is normally enough but certain situations and persons may require different amounts.

Multivitamins are a combination of different vitamins and minerals and are often created so that each vitamin and mineral is at optimum levels. Instead, we are going to look at the vitamins and minerals individually to find their recommended dosages, we are using the NHS website guidelines (30).

Vitamin C (40mg per day), B1 (1mg per day), B2 (1.3mg per day), B3 (16.5mg per day), B5 (<200mg per day), B6 (1.4mg per day), B7 (no RDA), B9 Folic Acid (200mcg per day), B12 (1.5mcg per day), Vitamin A (0.6mg per day for men), Vitamin D (10mcg per day in winter), Vitamin E (4mg per day for men), Vitamin K (1mcg per kg of body weight).

The next ingredients are commonly added to multivitamins, again this information comes from the NHS guidelines.

Potassium (3,500mg per day), Selenium (0.075mg per day), Iodine (0.14mg per day), Zinc (9.5mg per day), Calcium (700mg per day), Iron (8.7mg per day), Manganese (<4mg per day), Magnesium (300mg per day for men).

FAQ

What men’s vitamins can increase sperm count? Vitamin C (2,000 to 6,000 milligrams daily) helps prevent sperm from clumping or sticking together, thus improving the chances for fertility. Zinc supplementation(100 to 200 mg daily) has been shown to increase testosterone levels, sperm count and sperm motility.

Do men’s multivitamins have side effects? Many multivitamin products also contain minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, and zinc. Minerals (especially taken in large doses) can cause side effects such as tooth staining, increased urination, stomach bleeding, uneven heart rate, confusion, and muscle weakness or limp feeling.

Do men’s multivitamins make you gain weight? No, however, they can assist in weight loss by balancing the body’s minerals and ensuring a perfect environment to support weight loss efforts.

How long does it take vitamins to kick in? Any supplement is going to take a minimum of 2 to 4 weeks to begin to work before a person feels them ‘kick in.’ If it’s a mineral, you’re looking at about 90 days before your deficiency is fully amended.

Is it better to take a multivitamin in the morning or at night?  It’s better to take them in the morning since taking multivitamins at night can interfere with a good night’s sleep due to certain vitamins being more energetic in nature.

Is it safe to double dose on multivitamins in a day? One day will be fine. Every day might cause toxic levels of minerals to build up in the body. Stick to the RDA guidelines and you’ll be fine.

Can men’s multivitamins increase testosterone levels? Yes, multivitamins for men can boost testosterone levels depending on the specific formulation the chosen supplement contains. Supplements that contain more zinc may be more successful in testosterone enhancement as it is known to enhance the production of this specific hormone. 

Can women take multivitamins for men? While they may not cause any extreme side effects or harm from occasional use, it is highly recommended that women continue to take supplements specifically designed for their particular bodies. This is due mainly to the herbal supplements and vitamin levels designed to benefit the chemistry of men and women respectively. 

Can men get the same nutritional value from food? Yes, the same benefits found through the use of multivitamins can also be found in food. While this is the case, however, multivitamins can often help to enhance an already balanced diet and assist in preventing possible deficiencies or additional health concerns. 

What is a good multivitamin for fat loss? Most multivitamins are good for men who are cutting because they will support proper nutrition levels, despite less food. Any product on our list is ideal for a man looking to slim down.

Do multivitamins for men cause issues for those with diabetes? In general, no, multivitamins should not cause issues for those who suffer from diabetes. Multivitamins have been known to be extremely beneficial for those with a diabetic history. It is highly recommended, however, that you consult a trained physician before beginning supplementation to ensure you are aware of the proper vitamin and mineral intake required for your health concerns.

Are multivitamins for men safe for those with kidney disease? In general, men with a history of kidney disease should choose their multivitamin supplement carefully. In some cases, specific supplement ingredients may cause adverse effects for those with kidney disease. To determine the best supplement to use, it is recommended that kidney patients consult their physician to ensure their preferred supplement meets the requirements for optimum health benefits.

Can you take too many multivitamins for men? Though not common, it is possible to take too many multivitamins. Vitamin overdosing can occur in cases where multivitamins are taken with excessive levels. Vitamin overdosing can often cause mild symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, heightened anxiety, mood changes, abdominal discomfort, and cognitive function changes. If any of these symptoms occur, it is important to consult your doctor to test your levels and determine if excessive vitamins have been consumed. 

Can multivitamins for men held with mood disorders? Yes, multivitamins for men can help in the prevention or resolution of some mood disorders. Many studies have linked vitamin deficiency to mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. Supplementation through multivitamin use can boost the necessary vitamins to reduce the deficiency and boost moods accordingly. 

What is a good multivitamin for bodybuilders and athletes? One of the best multivitamins for men specifically focused on bodybuilding is animal pak. This is because it contains significantly higher doses than most other multivitamins, designed to support intense training, recovery and muscle growth.

What was Carl Zimmer’s article on multivitamins? Carl Zimmer wrote an article in the New York Times where he described how the rise in processed rice led to a condition called Beriberi. A condition that is caused by a deficiency in thiamine. The processing of the rice was stripping the rice of its outer layer (which was a great source of vitamins)

When were vitamins discovered? Vitamins were first discovered by a Polish scientist called Casimir Funk, who was not only responsible for the name (vital-amine = vitamin) but also became the “father of vitamin therapy” in 1912. In the hundred years since vitamin supplements have become a massive industry. In recent years, in a bid to earn even more revenue, multivitamins specifically aimed at men and women have now become popular.

What is the main issue with multivitamins for men? The issue with multivitamins is that the populations who are most in need of them are also the populations least likely to take them. Whereas people who don’t need to take them, are much more likely to. If you are considering taking a multivitamin, then first you should look at your current diet. If it’s already healthy then you probably get more benefit from avoiding a multivitamin and perhaps topping up individual vitamins or minerals that you may be deficient in.

If your diet is not currently healthy, then consider whether it would be possible to improve it in any way, before jumping to the multivitamin. That does not mean that a multivitamin would not be beneficial, just that it should be seen as a last solution rather than the first line of defense.

Who benefits from a multivitamin for men the most? What is interesting about a lot of the studies that have been mentioned is the fact that results are often seen in people with poor diets, or in people who are overweight or infirm. The elderly may see quite a lot of benefits from taking multivitamins, partly because they are at higher risk of infection, or macular degeneration, but also because their diet and health may be sub-optimal.

People who are relatively healthy are often not used in these studies, and when they are the study often fails to see a significant improvement in their health. For men specifically, it can help you, but it probably won’t help substantially unless your diet is unhealthy and you are deficient in a number of vitamins and minerals, or you have a health condition.

Recap

For a hundred years, the idea that multivitamin supplements were effective went unchallenged. In recent times, this belief has come into question. For people who are malnourished, or deficient, taking a multivitamin is unquestionably useful.

However, if you already consume a healthy diet that contains high levels of fruit and vegetables, not only is a multivitamin redundant, it may actually be harming your health.

For Healthtrends #1 recommended multivitamin for men, click here.

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