There is a lot of noise in the vitamin space. Crowded aisles overflowing with brands. Tips on which vitamins to take from friends, Facebook groups, or magazines. Doctors with radically different views on vitamins and their role in modern health care. It is no wonder that most consumers are lost in this $50 billion maze that we call the U.S. supplement industry.
Physicians see a stream of patients coming into their office with vitamin questions. Are any of these products evidence-based? What is right for me? Is it possible to overdose on vitamins? Is this just expensive urine? There are a number of myths and misconceptions.
Pair this confusion with the ultimate lack of navigation in retail shopping. Most doctors and pharmacists have limited training on dietary supplements, and do not stay up to speed on the latest scientific studies. The retail clerks in the store are unhelpful at best, or coercive to get you to overspend on vitamins at worst. Vitamin superstores just want you to maximize your spend on supplements. Online marketplaces are filled with endless pages of brand placements and advertisements, not making it any easier to discover your right-fit vitamin. There are a lot of options!
So, how do you personalize your daily vitamin routine? It turns there is an emerging class of personalized vitamin brands that have set out to build navigation into the vitamin shopping experience. These brands use technology and data to get you to a personalized set of recommendations. A personalized vitamin is one way to limit self-experimentation and “DIY” vitamin cocktails.
Choosing Between Personalized Vitamin Brands
There are three main types of personalized vitamin brands: 1) personalized pill packs; 2) liquid mixes; and 3) customized all-in-one vitamins. The common thread between all of these models is an upfront assessment. These companies will provide a survey tool to help understand your demographics, diet, health, and lifestyle. In some cases, the survey may be accompanied by a request for biological material (blood, hair, stool) or genetic test results. There tends to be limited utility in providing biologic or genetic material for personalized vitamin recommendations. Blood tests only tell you about a narrow range of nutrients, and they are a snapshot in time. They can be very expensive, and at-home blood tests may not be accurate depending on the testing method and user error. There have been independent experiments where a reviewer compares an at-home blood test to the test from their doctor’s office, and they get radically different results. Genetics are fraught with issues when it comes to vitamin recommendations, and often times the presence of a gene does not mean that gene is active in your body. These methods are often expensive hooks to get consumers to purchase more vitamins, and they pose serious privacy concerns. A well-structured survey is the optimal way to determine vitamin needs for most individuals, and where health may be trending based on lifestyle choices.
Personalized pill packs are the most common form of personalization. These brands will recommend several pills and bundle them together in a daily packet. The innovation is around supply chain and packaging, and limited improvement on the product-side. These pill packs can easily contain 10 or more daily pills and powders, and cost $100 or more per month. For many consumers, this will be too expensive and unsustainable from a healthy habit perspective. Can you imagine trying to swallow 10 pills of different shapes and sizes each day on top of your other medications?
Liquid mixes are another form of personalization. There are “Keurig-like” devices that will mix liquid batches of vitamins. Sounds futuristic and cool, right? In reality, these mixes often taste horrible like “vita-sludge,” and the machines have been criticized for technical issues. There are also pre-mixed smoothies with your personal blend of nutrients. Who wants to wake up each morning and choke down a vitamin smoothie? Who wants to make up and brew vita-sludge? These solutions also tend to be expensive. There are self-selected audiences for these products.
Finally, there are customized all-in-one multivitamins. These product innovations use data science to target the formula of a daily multivitamin. For many consumers, it is easy to swallow one or two daily vitamin tablets and make room in their morning routine for this behavior. The customized products tend to be designed to promote ease-of-swallowing with specialized pill coating and small tablet sizes. The customized products are also more affordable, and typically run 2-4x less than the other aforementioned methods of personalization. These companies use data to optimize dosing, and push the products past the watered-down, mass market alternatives of multivitamins designed for “all men” and “all women.”
The Promise of Navigation in Vitamin Selection
At the end of the day, it is imperative to find a personalized vitamin brand that will cut down on the confusion with a scientifically valid approach. You should pay close attention to who is behind the brand. Is it a marketer or celebrity, or reputable industry experts? Do you get the sense the company has leading research and education? Are the customer testimonials strong? Are there independent media reviews of the company?
Many companies will try to impress with their scientific advisory board, but these are not individuals that tend to be involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. Look for leaders with real medical and scientific credentials that stand behind the products. Are the founders qualified to put a personalized vitamin offering together? The critical factor to make personalized vitamin selection work is trust in the brand. You need to trust that the brand is being a good steward of your money and available scientific research. Trust is the ultimate factors that will drive compliance and long-term adherence.
The days of wandering the vitamin aisles are coming to an end. Find a personalized vitamin brand that will support you in reaching your nutritional goals.
