What Is The Best Multivitamin?

Hi, my name is Ben Greenfield, and two years ago I decided I was fed up with supplements. Just freaking tired of all the tablets, capsules, pills, powders and oils and bottles, lots and lots of plastic bottles scattered everywhere. And I distinctly remember the day I finally decided something needed to change. It was when I swung open the door of my refrigerator to dive into my daily regimen of vitamins, antioxidants, nutrients, micronutrients, f oils. And I realized it was getting overwhelming. Sure, it was better living through science, but it was anything but simple. And I'm sure you've experienced the same thing. You open what seems like nearly a dozen different bottles to launch into your morning supplement regimen. Or you pack your suitcase to travel and struggle to prioritize which bottles to shove into your limited suitcase space. Or you spend an inordinate amount of time tracking or ordering and restocking your vitamin D, or your fish oil, or your greens or your multivitamin or your minerals or your antioxidants or your amino acids. You get the idea. Supplement clutter, supplement confusion, and utter lack of supplement simplicity. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think supplements are an inconvenient and unnecessary curse that should simply all be tossed out. And there's certainly evidence that consuming nutrients from a healthy diet can be more beneficial than just relying on supplements. But even if your eating a healthy diet, studies have shown that it's nearly impossible in our modern era to get all our nutrients, vitamins and minerals only from food. So how on earth could this be? Is the planet broken or something? Well, there's actually nine reasons for the failure of modern diets to supply our bodies with all the nutrients that we need. First, modern commercial farming practices strip our precious soil of nutrients when plants are repeatedly grown on the same land for year after year, which is a relatively new phenomenon in agriculture that beats up our land but gives us lots and lots of calories. The overused soil loses its nutrients faster than they can be replaced. Over time, the plants have fewer nutrients to grow, so the farmers are forced to fertilize. Fertilizer contains enough nutrition for a plant to survive until harvesting, but not enough nutrients to support your body's nutrient needs. Now, the problem with this is compounded by the fact that most plants are not harvested fresh, so the nutrients degrade as they sit on airplanes, trucks, shelves and counters for weeks before they arrive on your plate. Now, most modern fruits and vegetables are grown for maximum sugar calories, which is one of the reasons they're so much bigger. These days and not maximum nutrients. And because much of your fresh produce that us humans would have historically relied upon for nutrients are, are instead artificially high in calories, fructose and other sugars. And of course, all of this is passed on to the animals, including you, that are eating the plants now. Third, pesticides are making this problem even worse. Because polyphenols, a plant's most potent antioxidants, are produced as a defense against bugs and pathogens, plants exposed to pesticides are lower in those precious polyphenols compared to organic ones. And to make things even more frustrating, and if you buy organic plants, this is no guarantee they haven't been exposed to pesticides. So unless you're going out of your way to grow your own fresh fruits and vegetables in a pristine backyard garden that contains soil which you've treated with added minerals, you're at a huge risk for malnourishment and nutrient deficiency that adversely affects your performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, brain sleep and hormone balance. Now, fourth, it's not just nutrient poor plants that are affecting the nutrient status of the animals that we rely on for food, but it's also what many of those animals are being fed, especially grains. Now, compared to grass fed meat, grain fed meat is lower in antioxidants, micronutrients, fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. But unfortunately, eating high quality organic grass fed meat, pastured pork and naturally raised poultry is not a reality for many people living in urban environments or on a food budget, or frequently traveling. Now, fifth, the nutrients in your food aren't the only things that are disappearing. Your liquids are being affected too. Now, unless you're drinking from your own well, or relying upon fancy, expensive mineralized water like Pellegrino, Perrier and Gerolsteiner, your bottled water, filter water and tap water is also often stripped of precious minerals. And this stripping is often accompanied by enormous levels of fluoride and chlorine. So this means that unless you want to spend lots and lots of money on fancy water, you're stuck in a situation where you must filter your water to get rid of that dangerous stuff, then figure out other methods like supplementation to get the minerals you'd normally be getting from the water. Now, unfortunately, milk is not much better than water, and the majority of nutrients in milk are found in the fat. So while organic, raw, unpasteurized, full fat dairy is high in nutrients, most of us don't have ready access to it, especially at the typical grocery store. In addition, milk pasteurization, that all too common process, can destroy most of the nutrients in skim and full fat milk. Modern conventional milk and other dairy products from grain fed cattle can also be higher in aflatoxin and other mycotoxins, which increases your nutrient needs even more, creating this vicious cycle. So whether it's due to nutrient poor plants, nutrient poor animals, nutrient poor milk, or nutrient poor water, most diets are so micronutrient deficient that they require on average over 27 calories to supply all the essential nutrients that you need. In other words, in our modern era, you need to be stuffing your face all day long to actually get what your body needs. And this doesn't take into account the fact that if you are trying to lose weight by restricting calories, or if you're a physically active person, like a triathlete, marathoner, crossfitter, weightlifter or other exercise enthusiast, then your risk of nutrient deficiency is going to be even higher. In other words, if you're a trying to lose weight by not stuffing your body full of excessive calories, B an athlete or physically active person, then you're pretty much guaranteed to be at a constantly malnourished nutrient deficit. Unless you figure some way to somehow squeeze in all those added nutrients. And finally, the older you get, the fewer nutrients you absorb. So as you age, the worse things things become. So let's say you dig a well, grow your own produce, milk your own goats, eat strictly grass fed meat and wild caught fish, you're relatively young and you avoid excessive physical activity or calorie restriction for weight loss. Then you're safe, right? No added nutrients or vitamins necessary. Right. Well, the unfortunate ninth fact is that unless you live in a pristine mountaintop in the Himalayas, you're exposed every day to airborne pollutants, xenoestrogens from plastics and bpa, environmental toxins, mold, industrial solvents, electromagnetic fields, heavy metals, fluorescent lighting, constant stress, sleep disruption and a host of other modern day assailants upon your biology. And your body simply wasn't meant to deal with these physiological stressors, all of which vastly increase your need for nutrients to help you fight the daily battle. So, for the reasons that I just listed, depleted soil, nutrient poor produce, pesticides, conventional meat, subpar water and milk, weight loss, physical activity, age and our modern post industrial living environment, you definitely shouldn't throw out all your supplements. So this was the conundrum I found myself in two years ago as I stood in front of my refrigerator door and sighed in frustration at the dizzying array of supplements and bottles. I knew that because of my extremely active lifestyle and the other reasons I just listed that I couldn't and shouldn't just throw out all my supplements. I knew that I needed to keep my precious nutrients topped off for better performance, recovery, fat burning, digest, mental focus, sleep and hormone balance. But I also knew that I was sick and tired of having to lug around a bunch of bottles, painstakingly use a weekly pillbox to keep track of my supplements like an old man tracks his medication, and constantly be headed over to Amazon or some other website to reorder something I was running low in. And then there was this gnawing worry at the back of my mind that any of these supplements I was ingesting could be laced with something like chemicals, pack toxins, metals, or illegal performance enhancing drugs that could potentially damage my body, put pie in my face, and get me banned from competing in a sanctioned sport like triathlon. I wanted better living through science, but I also wanted simplicity. And I knew that somewhere, somehow, there must be a way to have both the ultimate combination of science and simplicity. So at that point, I embarked upon my quest to discover the greatest multivitamin on the face of the planet. Something that could cover all my bases from a nutrient standpoint without requiring a dizzying, inconvenient and exhausting array of pills, bottles and packets. After all, that's kind of the definition of a multivitamin, right? It's supposed to cover multiple needs. Well, as a nutritionist, personal trainer, exercise physiologist and strength and conditioning coach with strict standards about what I find acceptable for myself or my clients to ingest, I had a very distinct set of criteria that I've researched that I know. A multivitamin must have seven criteria to be precise. First, it's got to be capsules, not tablets. Now, before completely shoving tablets under the bus, I'll acknowledge the two benefits tablets possess. Because tablets are pressed together so hard, more nutrients can fill the same amount of space in a tablet than a capsule. And it's cheaper to make tablets than capsules. But there are several drawbacks using tablets. First, they're harder to digest because they're packed together so tightly and need far more binders to keep them together. It takes much longer to or break them down in the digestive system. A capsule, on the other hand, breaks down within just minutes of hitting your digestive tract. And that's important because of the little known fact that most of the nutrients in a multivitamin actually need to be absorbed in your stomach. And when a tablet takes too long to break down in the stomach and passes onto your intestinal tract, Its content gets far less broken down and absorbed. And for you, that means expensive pee. While tablets also need lots of extra nasty ingredients like binders, lubricants, coatings, disintegrants and other excipients. These ingredients must be added to make the tablet stay together, to make the tablet shiny, and to make the tablet break apart. Tablet press machines compact the powdered nutrients together with a tremendous amount of force. And then to make those tablets shiny and easier to swallow, they get sprayed with coatings like shellac, just like the shellac found in furniture, but instead it's labeled pharmaceutical glaze. And they get coated with vegetable protein, which is most often a protein derived from GMO corn. So I'll take a capsule, please. Now, my next multivitamin criteria is I wanted one morning and one evening dose. Your body needs nutrients throughout the course of the day, not just one huge shotgun dose when you get out of bed in the morning or before you go to bed at night. So I needed to find a vitamin designed in such a way that it delivered important nutrients for daily metabolism and activity in the morning dose, then important nutrients for recovery, rest and sleep in the evening dose. But without a dizzying array of capsules. I'll admit that it does take slightly more discipline to take a multivitamin twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. But it's a much better way to deliver the optimal nutrients at the optimal times throughout the day. After all, you'd rarely only eat breakfast or only eat dinner, right? So I figure if I can handle at least two meals, I can handle two supplement doses, as long as it's not a dozen different bottles of stuff. So criteria number three is a low number of capsules. Now, one inconvenient. Extremely inconvenient Factor in most multivitamin formulas out there is the number of capsules necessary for daily use if you truly are going to be able to get all the nutrients that you need from a single formula. For me, taking three capsules in the morning and three in the evening is practical and doable. Anything less than that amount can significantly reduce the efficacy of a multivitamin formula. But once you get over six capsules, it just becomes a pain to manage and difficult to swallow and it's a hassle to travel with. So multivitamin criteria number four for me was I wanted vegan and vegetarian friendly capsules. Most capsule based multivitamins use capsules made from bovine gelatin. That's a fancy word for cows. And although I don't personally eat a plant based diet strictly. I have many clients who are either vegan or vegetarian. So I wanted the actual capsule material to be made from the best alternative to capsule based bovine gelatin. The ideal answer would be a capsule made of cellulose, which is a natural vegetable based material and it's just pure plant fiber. In other words, I know it's important that no animals be harmed in the formation of a good multivitamin. So multivitamin criteria number five for me was I didn't want magnesium stearate or other nasty fillers. Now that magnesium stearate is probably the most common agent that you'll find in the other ingredients section on the Supplement Facts box on any multivitamin label. Magnesium stearate is a lubricant that's used to manufacture nutrition supplements to help powders flu through the equipment faster. It allows more tablets to be made per hour, and it's a cost savings choice for a manufacturer. But studies have shown that magnesium stearate can reduce the absorption rate of some nutrients. It literally wraps around nutrients and keeps them from being absorbed in your digestive tract. So I'd instead like to see a multivitamin use something like calcium laurate, which helps powders flow through the equipment, but it's a completely naturally occurring material that doesn't inhibit absorption like magnesium stearate does. Now, that calcium laurate might not be as effective a flowing agent as magnesium stearate, so products can't get manufactured so fast. But it gets the job done without the need to use magnesium stearate. Now, when it's necessary to fill a capsule with something in addition to the actual nutrients in that capsule, I'd like to see a multivitamin have magnesium citrate, which is a pure element that reacts with pure citric acid, cellulose, a pure plant fiber, and other pure elements like silica, which is a pure ELE found in sand, or the amino acid leucine. I don't want nasty fillers like wheat, corn, gluten, yeast, egg, dairy, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, lactose, palmitic acid and stearic acid in my multivitamin because all of those fillers I just listed are completely unnatural. I want to be able to take a multivitamin without worrying about these unnatural, harmful ingredients that I could be ingesting. Now my next Criteria is no GMOs. For personal health and longevity reasons and for consideration of the earth's environment, I avoid like the plague any product that contains genetically modified organisms. Unfortunately, Most multivitamins contain GMO laden ingredients as well as corn gluten and some of those other nasty fillers I mentioned earlier. This requires that any multivitamin I would ever use would need to be closely analyzed by a manufacturer and guaranteed to be absolutely certain that none of the ingredients are derived from GMO sources, nor that the multivitamin uses GMOs in its production. Now my next multivitamin criteria is that it has no banned ingredients. Now, like I mentioned, it's very important to me that any supplement I take is not only manufactured in a certified good manufacturing practices facility to ensure purity, but it's also free of ingredients that would get me banned from competing in triathlons or taint my body with unnatural steroids or hormones. For years I was under the impression that something called NSF for Sport was the strictest third party verification standard by which to judge whether a supplement contains potentially illegal or banned ingredients. But it turns out I was wrong. There's something even more strict than nsf, and that's something called Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration or tga. That's the Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency of Australia. It's considered the toughest agency in the world. And the TGA inspired inspection and certification is conducted at a pharmaceutical level standard. Which means that the supplements certified by the TGA are verified to be as pure as an actual pharmaceutical drug. For me, to hold a multivitamin to as strict a standard as a TGA certification is pretty tough. Only a small handful of US based companies are able to achieve the status of holding a TGA certification. And there's really only one dietary supplement company in the US that has ever completed all three strict levels of tga. Since the certification requires not only a review of good manufacturing practices every two years, but also an on site inspection of every aspect of a multivitamin's quality control, laboratory procedures, pharmaceutical good manufacturing practices and standard operating procedures. But that's not all. I'd also prefer for the multivitamin to be certified by something called Informed Choice. And that requires five samples from three different production runs of product to be tested. Which would further guarantee, because of extremely rigid raw material and finished product testing and production procedures, absolutely no ingredient banned by any amateur or professional organization. In other words, I want rock solid bulletproof confidence that I can hand any multivitamin that I would ever endorse or personally use to the best athlete on the face of the planet with with zero reservations about whether or not that multivitamin is pure or might get them banned from sports. Now I Also know that there are notoriously neglected ingredients in most multivitamin complexes that make them barely scratch the surface of your true nutrient needs. Especially if you're a hard charging athlete, exercise enthusiast, aging person, or busy professional living a CEO esque lifestyle, or anyone else with advanced nutrient needs. So what are the neglected components that I require to be present in a multivitamin? Well, first, vitamin B6, B12 and B2, but in their correct form. So the bioactive form of vitamin B6 is something called pyridoxal 5 phosphate. But the most common form found in most multivitamins is pyridoxine HCl, which is not the active form of vitamin B6. The most common form of vitamin B12 used in nutrition supplements and processed foods is cyanobacter. And cyanocobalamin is absorbed at a much lower rate than methylcobalamin, which is the form of vitamin B12 that a multivitamin should have. And then we have B2 or riboflavin 5 phosphate. That riboflavin 5 phosphate is the bioactive form of B2, but riboflavin HCl is the form commonly used in multivitamins. And that form has to be converted in an extra step in your liver to its common form. So why do most multivitamins cut corners on these forms of vitamin B? Well, they're either uninformed or they're just going for the cheap alternative. Now, next is folate in the correct form. And folate is very important for your DNA. But a significant percentage of the population has trouble converting folic acid to folate, which is the natural form found in foods and in the body. However, folic acid is what most nutritional supplements and fortified foods and multivitamins use. A good multivitamin should use a form of folate called L5 methyltetrahydrofolate to ensure the folate is actually absorbed. Now, this costs a manufacturer more than folic acid. But I only want a multivitamin with ingredients that work, not that just look pretty on a label and then give me expensive pee. Now, next I want minerals that are actually absorbable. Now, most minerals by themselves are poorly absorbed and they need to be bound the same way as they are in nature to things like amino acids. That's called a mineral chelate and that absorbs much, much better. Now, the most absorbable form of a mineral is the bisglycinate chelate form. And to avoid minerals in a multivitamin, again just creating expensive pee, I would like to see things like calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc, manganese, and chromium in their chelated form. Next, I love curcumin. It's one of my favorite supplements. It's a potent natural anti inflammatory that can control brain and muscle inflammation, positively affect muscle health, joint structure and function, and antioxidant activity in the gut, liver and heart. But the trouble with most curcumin ingredients is that they're extremely poorly absorbed. But there is a form of curcumin called curcumin phytosome that's absorbed 29 times better than a standard curcumin extract. It was developed by researchers in Milan, Italy and it's the only form of curcumin that I'd like to see in a multivitamin. Next, I want a green tea source that's actually absorbable because green tea is an extremely powerful antioxidant that's been shown to have a mild effect also on raising metabolic rate and improving fat oxidation. But just like that, curcumin standard green tea extracts aren't very well absorbed. So the same researchers who discovered that curcumin phytosome I mentioned earlier have also developed green tea phytosome which provides a much better absorbed form of green tea extract and should also ideally be in a multivitamin. And then finally, I want adaptogens. Stress fighting adaptogens are another notoriously missing component of most multis. But in our hectic era they're a must have for sleep de stressing and hormone balance. One of the most potent adaptogenic compounds that I discovered in my multivitamin research that both lowers cortisol levels and raises testosterone levels is called Relora and it's a blend of Magnolia and and Philodendron. And if you add it to a multivitamin, it will help curb cravings and stress related eating and help calm the mind and support rest and relaxation prior to bedtime. Now as a high intensity guy, this addition would be very important to me as a necessary multivitamin ingredient. But remember, this all comes down to simplicity. That means that if you or I can't get our hands on a capsule based, pure and safe, minimalist and simple multivitamin that provides everything that I just described, then it means we're going to have to buy 6, 8, 10 or 12 different supplements to supply our daily nutrient needs and fill in all the holes that a multivitamin isn't giving. So that's what I've been doing. Over the past two years. I've been taking a deep, deep dive into educating myself on the wide world of nutrients, supplements, ingredients, fillers, formulations, encapsulation, technology, and every aspect that goes into creating a multivitamin. And I've literally been pulling my hair out and hitting dead end after dead end as I've been trying to hunt down something that meets my strict criteria, quality for a multivitamin. Of course, I've also found it incredibly frustrating when my clients or readers or listeners or me have to simply keep on taking a crazy number of supplements or buying an unbelievable number of bottles and spending inordinate amounts of money when it's so straightforward to see what a multivitamin that meets all our daily nutrient needs should really have and not have in it. And you know what? I'm an author, an athlete and a teacher and I don't fancy myself as a supplement manufacturer. So I can't go simply hunting down the raw ingredients and formulating my own multivitamin. I just want a multivitamin that I can, with a clear conscience, recommend to you and also take myself. And I don't think that's asking too much. And then it happened. During one of the dozens and dozens of phone calls I made and countless hours I spent hunting down the perfect multivitamin formulation, a raw ingredient manufacturer who I spoke with informed me of the existence of a new multivitamin formulation created by a company that you see pictured here called Thorne Research, which is in Dover, Idaho. And ironically, that's just 60 miles from the front door of my house in this tiny town in Idaho. And it's where these thorn research facilities are located. After months and months of searching, it turned out the solution could possibly be right in my own backyard. Well, for over 30 years, Thorne Research has set the standard for exceptional formulations, quality and purity in the dietary supplement industry and is considered to be the most respected supplements brand in the healthcare practitioner space. That's right. This is the stuff physicians use with their patients. And I'd heard of Thorne before, but I always thought it was just for the fancy doctors and clinicians and that I really couldn't access it or use it or recommended. And that was true. Until recently, none of the coveted Thorne Research products were available for me or any other personal trainer or nutritionist to actually recommend to our clients, readers or listeners. Instead, these high quality private formulations were only available for physicians or dietitians to use with their patients and only for certified healthcare providers to use with their clients. But then, just this year, Thorne Research created this new brand called ThorneFX. And Thorne FX was specifically designed to address the growing demand of Fitness experts like me who are seeking a solution for people but don't have privileged access to the fancy formulations that normally only a doctor would be able to prescribe or order. So I thought it was pretty interesting that I now had access to some of the highest quality formulations on the face of the planet, produced in a facility just an hour's drive from my house. But it turned out there was even more good news. I also discovered that when Thorne created this ThorneFX branch, they had not just created a multivitamin formulation, but they had specifically left no stone unturned to launch the most powerful absorbable multivitamin on the face of the planet. One that met all my strict criteria, but previously had never been available to the general population unless their doctor or their dietitian knew about it. And it's called the Multi Ampm Complex. I immediately got my hands on it when I found out about it. And upon closer inspection and using it myself for a month, I instantly knew that it wasn't your typical multivitamin. It's formulated with these superior forms of vitamin minerals in two formulations, an AM formula for daytime energy and a PM formula for rest and recovery in the evening. Now, some of the key differentiators in the multi am pm complex include vitamin K1 and K2. Most multivitamins usually use no K1 or K2 at all. The natural form of folate, I mentioned the natural form of vitamin Bs. I mentioned the chelated minerals to ensure optimal absorption. Higher doses of magnesium and calcium. Curcumin. Phytosome, that's the absorbable one. Green tea. Phytosome relora. The blend of adaptogenic plant extract and no. Wheat, corn, gluten, yeast, egg, dairy, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, lactose, magnesium, stearate, palmitic acid or stearic acid. It literally satisfies every criteria I require in a multivitamin. All of those notoriously neglected ingredients that most folks leave out, along with a TGA and informed choice certification. No GMOs, no nasty fillers and ingredients. It's a capsule instead of a tablet. It's everything now. I couldn't believe it when I first found out about this new formulation. Three capsules in the morning, three capsules in the evening. Easy, simple science. Here's what the label actually looks like. And as you can see for yourself, the full list of ingredients is so comprehensive that the most beat up athlete or hard charging CEO or busy person on the face of the planet could take this stuff and literally get everybody micronutrient they would ever need, all in a guilt free format with none of these artificial ingredients.

The science is obviously there. It's got every nutrient your body needs. But the simplicity is so amazingly refreshing. Especially when I pack to travel and I literally have one morning bottle and one evening bottle to toss into my suitcase. And of course a heck of a lot of extra space in my refrigerator. It's like a one stop shop for everything that my body needs. So that's it. Pure and simple. I've never before been able to recommend a complete multivitamin that satisfies all my criteria and I've always had a refrigerator full of a bunch of bottles. But now that problem is solved. The Thorne FX Multi AM PM Complex is now my recommended go to source for the ultimate combination of science and simplicity. And the best thing yet is that an entire month of it is just 60 bucks. That's right, $60. So rather than forking over hundreds of dollars for bottle after bottle of fancy supplements, powders, tablets, pills and oils, you get one multivitamin that hits all of your needs for a mere fraction of the price. So you can go spend that extra money you're blowing on 10 different supplements on a fancy steak dinner or chalk it away for your kids college or your next car. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com multi you can get the AM PM complex right now. You can't get it on Amazon, on gnc, at your local supplement store, or anywhere else. You need to actually get it through a licensed nutritionist or personal trainer or someone else who is qualified to get it to you. But you can do that right now if you go To Ben Greenfield Fitness.com multi within 5 minutes this thing could be on its way to your front doorstep and you can kiss all of your other cluttered bottles of expensive supplements goodbye. So you're really going to enjoy the way that your body feels once you start taking this easy formula. And Again, it's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com multi enjoy the feeling and the science and the simplicity and know that this is something that I now back endorse, vouch for, and now use in my own personal daily routine with great success. So again, check it out. BenGreenfieldFitness.Com multi thanks for watching.