Vitamins and Coffee
A common phrase related to vitamins are:
Your body flushes away more than 90% of the vitamins you take.
and yet, doctors would be recommending:
Please take your vitamins.
How can both of these statements make sense?
If one statement is true, the other is false. Which one??
Can both statements be true? If so, can there be another reason to explain both are true? Can the explanation keep both statements in good light? (i.e. without devolving the entities making the statement?)
Vitamin Flushing Explanation
There is an explanation that keep both statements true, with an additional statement:
Take your vitamins in the morning, when your body needs it for the day.
- One thing everyone drinks in the morning: coffee.
- One thing about coffee: it contains copious amounts of anti-oxidant.
- Anti-oxidant are efficient at removing excess nutrients in the body.
So, taking vitamins and drinking coffee in the morning, the end result will be:
Your body flushing away more than 90% of the vitamins you take (because of coffee!)
How I Encountered
I learned about this phenomenon during our first child, when the doctor directed my wife to take iron supplements as her iron levels were low.
At the next visit, her iron levels were still the same, even though she was taking the supplements as directed. The doctor asked when she took the vitamins.
The key insight: my wife took the supplements in the morning, when she also took her coffee.
There is research done on this topic: Inhibition of food iron absorption by coffee - in 1983!
Note, it’s not the caffeine in the coffee, it’s the tannin - that are anti-oxidant. So even decaffeinated coffee will have the same effect.
How to take Vitamins?
The best way to take vitamins is through your normal diet. When taking vitamin supplements, to make the most of them, take them with a one-hour window between any anti-oxidizing drinks, such as coffee or tea.
Basically, take your vitamins one hour after your last sip of coffee and wait one hour before your next sip of coffee.