You may have seen social media ads or tv commercials about personalized vitamins and wondered how these vitamins compare to standard, off-the-shelf options. It is helpful to turn to physicians that have experience in the space. Arielle Levitan, M.D., and Romy Block, M.D. are founders of the company, Vous Vitamin, which was an early entrant in the personalized vitamin space in 2014. Vous Vitamin specializes in using an online health and lifestyle assessment to customize the composition and dosing of a daily all-in-one vitamin. The physicians are also co-authors of the award-winning book, The Vitamin Solution: Two Doctors Clear the Confusion around Vitamins and Your Health, published in 2015.
According to Drs. Block and Levitan, one of the most common questions they are asked is “what vitamins should I take?” The doctors realized the answer will not the same for everyone. The answer differs based on the individual, including their eating habits, exercise routine, and health concerns. The composition and dosing of vitamins should not be the same for everyone. There is no truth in the approach of multivitamins that serve the needs of “all women” or “all men.”
If we all have different vitamin needs based on these factors, you may wonder “How do I figure out what vitamins to take?” The doctors have refined a list of questions that distill the life factors and determine which nutrients that you need. As a next step in their journey, they realized the process of collecting data around vitamin needs could be streamlined. They created an online tool that feels like the “conversation you wish you had with your doctor.” They also crafted products targeted to individual needs. These are the products they always wished were available to their patients.
Enter Personalized Vitamins as a Navigation Tool
Selecting your vitamins can be confusing, but there is a navigation tool that can make the process easier. Vous Vitamin is a complete solution: an assessment tool married to a recommendation engine that gets the consumer to a simplified and targeted daily vitamin routine. Leaving consumers to their own devices is not the right answer. The products on the shelves of mass market are not regulated by the FDA in the same way as prescription drugs, and there are a number of safety concerns, particularly with overseas manufacturing. There are vitamin companies that put ingredients into their products that can have serious adverse reactions, and some do not even correctly list what is in the product on the ingredient label. Many consumers take products with lack of purity and integrity. Moreover, there are consumers that will unintentionally take vitamins that can interact or interfere with medications. Drs. Block and Levitan created Vous Vitamin to end these concerns and to help match individuals with the exact vitamins they should be taking in a single pill, all in one vitamin product.
After years of making recommendations about which vitamins to take we realized that this process could be streamlined. Not only could we create an online tool in our vitamin quiz to help recreate the experience of this conversation with a doctor, but we could create the products for people to take that we had always wanted to have for our own patients. Thus, the birth of Vous Vitamin®. As physicians we always struggled to find vitamin and supplement products to recommend to our patients. The industry is not well regulated and manufacturing of these products are not overseen by the FDA as are other prescription and over the counter medicines. It’s hard to know the level of quality in any vitamin products or to be certain that they are pure, safe and contain what is listed on the bottle (see more on supplement safety here). We created Vous Vitamin® to end these concerns and to help match individuals with the exact vitamins they should be taking in a single pill, all in one vitamin product.
The average consumer can search the vitamin aisles of your local retailer for hours and consult with various online sources all day, but most likely they will end up more confused than when they started. You may come home with a bag full of vitamins that are potentially harmful together or with other medications you take. Even worse, you may come home with products that contain unnecessary and potentially harmful ingredients. Vitamins can be a complicated and dangerous business. A doctor’s expertise is needed to navigate these waters. The doctors behind Vous Vitamin wrote The Vitamin Solution: Two Doctors Clear the Confusion About Vitamins and your Health to help provide people with useful information. The Vous Vitamin platform transforms this information in actionable recommendations.
So, when confronted with the question “What vitamins should I take?” There is finally a simple answer, so start your assessment and learn which vitamins are right for you.
