We are a people living on the fast lane, more and more we want gravitate towards choices that will offer quick and instant solutions. The 10 second attention span phenomena is a natural development of this concept. 

The spawning of a whole generation of people who are driven to believe that faster is better and time is money that cannot be wasted. 

This has led to complete industries that are thriving in production of these instant alternatives. Fast food restaurants, microwavable instant dinners, the internet to name but a few and we are purely responsible for this state of society under the guise of technological advancement. 

The multivitamin industry has taken a foothold in the past decade and is now thriving an underbelly feeding on our need to popping pills as a shortcut to healthy eating. 

Eating a balanced diet is healthy for you, we all know this to be but somewhere a long the line we decided that we would not put in the effort to come up with healthier eating alternatives either because we as were too lazy to put in the effort or we were convinced that we did not have time to do it. 

The instant meals and fast foods that are our staple diets are by no means healthy for the body and as the obesity epidemic grew, the alternative was to make a multivitamin pills that buffered the deficiency we were not getting in our diets. 

Obvious response to that was to create more multivitamins for more diet deficiencies since they were dubbed as natural with no side effects and as a cheaper alternative to the expensive side effect laden pharmaceutical drugs.

In essence they were a pitched as perfect solution to the deficiency problem. 

Today the multivitamin industry is a behemoth billion dollar enterprise with mainstream implications to our everyday lives. There is a multivitamin for practically any ailment or deficiency you can think of, we have wildly bought into the notion that they really provide an excellent healthier alternative to pharmas. 

As a type 2 diabetic I take a few supplements and multivitamins on a daily basis but a recent study I came across has me questioning this habit. Crucial for my survival with an impaired pancreas is my body’s sensitivity to insulin and I will take anything that will increase that sensitivity or so I thought. 

The body produces ROS (reactive oxygen series) as a natural by-product of metabolism, these radicals are extremely reactive and if not continually removed from the body, they will damage cell structures and DNA.

A normal healthy body is more than capable of eliminating these radicals on its own but an healthy chronically ill one most likely cannot so we use Antioxidants mostly found in multivitamin supplements to eradicate these ROS radicals and they do a good job of it. 

A recent study by Australian scientists found that low levels of these ROS radicals can promote insulin response and curtail insulin resistance in early stages of type 2 diabetics, so eradicating them is not an entirely very good idea.(published in the latest issue of the journal cell metabolism) 

Now while this was just one study and it was done in the lab under close monitored conditions, on lab mice for that matter, does mean that you shouldn’t take it at full value. Do not run out and dump all your multivitamin supplements. It does however bring up an interesting issue for me as a type 2 diabetic. 

Insulin sensitivity as I stated earlier was my number one concern when it comes to my diabetes management so anything that hinders that just makes my efforts counter productive, should I wait for more conclusive study on the matter or should I stop taking taking them and find a different alternative, to my multivitamins help.