Can dietary supplements be taken long-term?

There is really no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It depends on what you are taking supplements, whether you have any nutritional gaps, and whether the dosage is appropriate. You should not just follow the marketing rhetoric of "long-term supplements for health", and there is no need to kill all situations that require long-term supplements.

Two years ago, I accompanied my elders to the nutrition department. The old man had poor digestion and absorption after gastrectomy and could not consume enough vitamin B12 in his daily diet. The doctor clearly required him to take low-dose B12 supplements for a long time and review his indicators every three months. In the past two years, his anemia problem has been alleviated a lot, and he has not experienced any side effects. In this situation where there are clear clinical indications and he is taken according to the doctor's instructions, long-term consumption will do more good than harm.

But if you have a well-balanced diet, you can eat enough fish, poultry, eggs, milk, vegetables and fruits every day, and you don’t have any underlying diseases or malabsorption, but you just buy high-dose products after seeing short videos saying “Grape seeds are anti-aging” and “Coenzyme Q10 protects the heart”, let alone long-term, you may have problems after just a few months. I just received a private message from a reader last month, saying that I followed the trend and took high-dose vitamin E for more than half a year. I originally wanted to lighten my spots, but instead of lightening my spots, I developed breast swelling and pain. It took me almost two months to stop and it took me back. I went to the doctor and said that it was caused by excessive supplementation.

Of course, there are situations in between. For example, many office workers who eat takeout every day often can’t get enough green leafy vegetables, and they forget to eat eggs and milk when they are busy. It is better to choose a basic multivitamin that meets the reference intake of dietary nutrients for Chinese residents and take it at the recommended dose for a long time. There are several friends around me who are in the Internet business. They keep it all year round, and the nutritional indicators in annual physical examinations are quite normal. It is better than repeated oral ulcers and frequent colds caused by long-term vitamin deficiency.

In fact, to put it bluntly, dietary supplements are like "patches" for your diet. If you have a hole in your clothes, you can patch it with a patch of suitable size and material, and you can wear it for several years. If the clothes are intact, if you forcefully sew several thick patches on them, it will irritate the clothes and affect the life of the clothes themselves.

If you really want to worry about whether you can eat it for a long time, it is better to spend two days recording your dietary intake, or go to the hospital for a nutrition-related test, and ask a doctor or registered dietitian if you are unsure. It is much more reliable than fussing over the product copy, right?