A Harvard research study titled “Vitamins for Chorionic Disease Prevention in Adults” was published in The Journal of American Medical Association. The study concluded that people who get enough vitamins might be able to prevent such common chronic illnesses as cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. Based on the findings of this study, the AMA (American Medical Association) now recommends that all adults take a multivitamin daily.

Dietary supplements may help healthy people for a number of reasons. They can help prevent vitamin and mineral deficiencies when the diet is not adequate to provide all necessary nutrients, and normal diets may be deficient in one or more nutrients for a variety of reasons. The typical Western diet often supplies less than adequate amounts of several essential vitamins and minerals. Recent nutrition surveys in the U.S. have found large numbers of people consume too little calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and possibly copper and manganese. Weight-loss, pure vegetarian, macrobiotic, and several other diets can also place some people at risk of deficiencies that vary with the type of diet. Elderly people are at especially high risk of developing dietary deficiencies.

Vitamins can offer specific benefits for women. For instance, folic acid is crucial for women of childbearing age to prevent neural tube defects in babies. Additionally, vitamins like D and calcium are essential for bone health, particularly in postmenopausal women who are at increased risk for osteoporosis. Iron is another important nutrient, especially for women with heavy menstrual cycles.