The truth about vitamin pills: should midlife women start taking supplements – and if so, which ones?

The market for supplements is booming and it can be difficult to know which are actually any use. Dietitians give the lowdown on those you should take and those you can ditch

I used to proudly eschew health supplements. Doctors always told me that if you eat a healthy diet, you’d only be flushing money down the loo. Studies showed that people who popped multivitamins didn’t live any longer, with some even dying a little younger – a 4% higher mortality risk according to one just last year. But now I’m unequivocally post youth, my supplement intake has crept up to four a day: vitamin D (by NHS decree), magnesium (for sleep, muscle relaxing, brain and stress; pretty sure it’s helping), lion’s mane mushroom (cognition; no idea if it’s working), biotin (hair health; ditto) and I’m considering crowbarring more in if I can afford them. Am I a total sucker, though? Do women really need to start taking supplements when they hit middle age?

“There are plenty of reasons why we might need supplements as we age,” says Claire Pettitt, a specialist women’s health dietitian, who works in the UK and Singapore. “It’s not drastic, as if all of a sudden we need a drip,” she says. “But as we age, our body doesn’t work as well, and there are some nutrients, such as vitamin B12 and calcium, that we start to absorb much less efficiently as we get older.”