Men’s multivitamins help to provide the proper essential vitamins and minerals for optimized male health. Men have different nutritional needs compared to women, primarily to keep testosterone and growth hormones high.
Many men are investing in multivitamins to ensure they are taking preemptive care of their health and steering clear of unwanted chronic diseases.
There is no substitute for a balanced diet and good exercise protocol however, the inclusion of a multivitamin for men into an everyday routine could help to reap the benefits of staying healthier and even looking younger.
When looking at men’s multivitamins, it’s important to know the following:
- Vitamin D is one of the most well-rounded and essential vitamins for the human body and should be included at a relatively high dosage in the multivitamin of your choosing.
- Folate is a critical ingredient to look out for to support protein synthesis, form healthy blood cells, and ensure sperm are healthy.
- Calcium and vitamin D go hand in hand. Calcium helps the absorption of vitamin D as well as providing its own bone-strengthening benefits.
Food4me.org’s team of health and fitness experts have researched and ranked the top ten multivitamins for men on the market currently.
Our Winners
Best overall: Performance Lab NutriGenesis Multi for Men
Best multivitamin for men over 50: Ritual Essential for Men 50+
Best multivitamin for men for bodybuilding: Triumph by Legion
Best chewable multivitamin for men: SmartyPants Men’s Formula
Rankings
1. Performance Lab NutriGenesis Multi for Men
NutriGenesis for Men provides more than 17 daily essential vitamins and minerals. Its especially high in vitamin B where you are getting above 200% for all daily values.
This Performance Lab product is formulated with whole-food cofactors to increase absorption so you are getting everything out of this supplement. It’s free of almost all allergens and contains prebiotic nutricaps to help promote and maintain healthy gut flora.
Specifically tailored towards improving male health, Performance Lab NutriGenesis is the ultimate choice and takes our #1 spot for the best multivitamin.
2. Ritual Essential for Men 50+
Ritual Essential for Men 50 and over is scientifically developed to help fill any nutrition gaps in your diet. This product supports heart health, bone health, normal muscular function, and normal immune function.
This supplement contains 10 traceable ingredients with no added fillers, artificial colors and is non-GMO so you can be certain you are getting a top-notch product.
Their capsules have been created to be slow dissolving so it doesn’t upset the sensitive areas in your gut. This is a fantastic product for men over 50 to ensure they are getting the cleanest and best supplement out there.
3. Triumph for Men by Legion
Legion’s multi for men is formulated with 21 essential vitamins and minerals with an additional 14 herbs and amino acids for an extra performance kick. Every ingredient has been meticulously chosen and comes at clinically effective dosages all while being backed by peer-reviewed science.
This product contains ingredients to help support prostate health and even can help boost testosterone in the body. If you are looking for a scientifically researched product to help with a performance focus, this product is perfect.
4. Dr. Tobias Adult Multivitamin
Dr.Tobias Adult Multivitamin brings a more natural approach to the average multi on the market. In addition to having some of the highest daily values for several of the ingredients, it is also fortified with a complete fruit and vegetable complex.
The fruit and vegetable complex is a proprietary blend so we can’t tell how much of each ingredient there is, but it contains some powerhouse superfoods such as acai and goji berry.
5. Vimerson Health Men’s Multivitamin
Vimerson Health delivers a great option for a male-driven multi. It contains all the necessary ingredients to support optimal male health with the addition of three proprietary blends.
Male support, immune support, antioxidant fruit, and energy support all work synergistically with the other ingredients to provide a great option for any male.
6. One A Day Men’s Complete Multivitamin
One A Day has formulated their men’s multi to support 6 vital functions of health – energy metabolism, heart health, immunity, healthy muscle function, cell health, and healthy blood pressure.
With 200 servings and under $15 per bottle, it’s pretty hard to beat.
7. Centrum Multivitamin for Men
Each bottle of Centrum’s Multivitamin for Men comes with 250 capsules full of great ingredients to support energy, immunity, muscle strength, and metabolism. This supplement provides you with all the basics of standard letter vitamins and metal minerals with no additional ingredients.
A large majority of the ingredients will provide you with at least 100% of your daily value ensuring you won’t be lacking in any area of nutrition.
8. SmartyPants Men’s Formula
SmartyPants has come out with a great alternative for people who can’t swallow capsules. Their men’s formula is crafted with science-based nutrition to support the health needs of men.
The serving size is 6 gummies which can be a lot and the daily value for each of the ingredients is lower than its capsule competitor. Still, if you prefer a gummy formula this is a great option.
9. Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men
Optimum Nutrition provides a great multivitamin with a gender-specific blend of vitamins, minerals, herbal extracts, and amino acids.
The concentration of vitamins and minerals is specifically high in this product where almost all ingredients are above 100% daily value and some even go up to 5000%. They have had some issues with label accuracy where independent labs are at odds with what’s on the label.
10. Rainbow Light Men’s One Multivitamin
Rainbow light men’s one multi supports immune, bone, and brain health including a rainbow superfood blend and probiotics.
The purity is good, but not great and again with proprietary blends, it’s difficult to know how much of each ingredient is included in the product.
Best Overall Men’s Multivitamin
1. Performance Lab NutriGenesis Multi for Men
Performance Lab NutriGenesis uses all-natural ingredients to provide all the essential vitamins and minerals for the male body to have optimized health. Even rare trace elements like manganese, molybdenum, and copper are included in fairly high quantities.
All packaged in a prebiotic nutricap, NutriGenesis easily takes the top spot overall.
Best Multivitamin for Men over 50
1. Ritual Essential for Men 50+
Engineered for the man who doesn’t “mess around” Ritual has developed a fantastic product for men over the age of 50.
Compared to the ritual multi for 18+, this product has more folate, B12, magnesium, and vitamin K to help support bone health and energy, which is why Essential for Men 50+ takes the top spot for best multi for men over 50.
Best Multivitamin for Bodybuilding
1. Triumph for Men by Legion
Legion’s sport formula for men provides 21 vitamins and minerals plus 14 herbal extracts to improve overall health and wellness and give you a clean energy boost.
Triumph takes the top sport for best multivitamin for bodybuilding because it provides mega doses of essential vitamins and minerals that support exercise and performance – ensuring that even the most intense athletes are properly nourished.
Best Chewable Multivitamin for Men
1. SmartyPants Men’s Formula
These multifunction, non-GMO, and allergen-free gummies take the top spot for the best chewable multivitamin on the market. They are low in sugar without any artificial sweeteners and provide your body with 17 essential nutrients to optimize your health and regeneration.
If you are looking for a gummy to satisfy all your multivitamins needs, this is definitely the winner.
Who Should Use a Multivitamin for Men?
Any man, whether you are busy, or don’t have time to get proper meals in will benefit from taking a multivitamin. Geared towards supporting aspects of male-specific health, these multivitamins can work with your body to give you an all-around boost.
It’s important to practice good exercise and eating habits to get the majority of your health benefits. However, we live in a world full of chemicals, stress, anxiety, and many other things that constantly strip our bodies of nutrients. Having a multivitamin to support your already healthy lifestyle, will give your body an additional boost.
Methodology
Clinically effective dosages: One of the first things we looked into, and one of the most important aspects of a multivitamin is the dosages of individual ingredients. More often than you think, manufacturers will put way more of a cheaper ingredient and skimp out on another to cut costs.
We only looked for formulas that had a balanced and correct dosage for each ingredient that was supported by science. This is why multis like Legion and Performance Lab ranked so highly.
Male-specific ingredients: Due to the fact that this is meant to be a male-specific multivitamin, we looked out for products that made an effort to tailor their ingredients towards the needs of male health. Supplements that contained ingredients to help boost male hormones like testosterone and support prostate health were given bonus points.
High doses of zinc, B12, and magnesium were at the top of our list and the products that contained ingredients such as lycopene or Rhodiola got extra points as those have been proven to support testosterone levels.
Bioavailability: Most vitamins and minerals come in different forms or versions of themselves and some of those are easier for our bodies to absorb than others. For example, zinc comes in two forms – zinc gluconate or zinc oxide.
Zinc oxide is easier for our bodies to absorb and due to the bioavailability, you will get more out of that ingredient. Products that did the research and incorporated more bioavailable ingredients were rewarded in our rankings.
Adaptogens: Adaptogens can work with the body to help reduce and adapt to stress. What makes them so beneficial to males is that they help improve testosterone levels in your body by fighting off cortisol which works against testosterone.
Products that included adaptogens like ashwagandha were included to further optimize male general health.
Method of delivery: Although capsules typically outperform their gummy competitors, we understand that many people simply can’t swallow pills. SmartyPants solves this problem by having developed a strong multivitamin that doesn’t come in capsules but tasty little treats.
Products like Performance Lab were ranked so highly due to their capsule size and innovation. They chose a 00 sized capsule making it easier to swallow and that was prebiotically infused supporting better digestion and absorption of the nutrients inside.
Benefits
Multivitamins for men including magnesium is crucial for health. Although it is not necessary to have large amounts of it, magnesium takes part in over 300 biochemical reactions that occur on a daily basis in the human body. Magnesium can help with muscle cramps, support your immune system, help to maintain a steady heartbeat, keep your bones strong, and help to maintain normal muscle and nerve function.
In addition to all those benefits, magnesium can also help to produce energy, improve sleep quality and adjust your blood glucose levels (1).
Multivitamins for men work to sustain healthy bones. Many of us know that calcium plays a fairly large role in our bone health. What people may not know is the importance of several other vitamins and minerals that also support healthy bone growth and strength. Vitamin D, K, magnesium, iron, copper, and many others.
Vitamin D in particular helps your body to absorb calcium efficiently and use it to support your bones. Having a certain amount in your blood (30ng/ml) is important for protecting against many bone disorders like osteopenia and osteoporosis (2).
Multivitamins for men can improve metabolic functioning. Your metabolism has several jobs including converting food to energy to run all cellular processes, converting food to building blocks like protein to support muscles, and lipids for hormones, and eliminating metabolic waste. Several ingredients can help to support the many processes of the metabolic system.
Selenium’s primary purpose is to help your body break down food to use as fuel and makes sure you don’t store excess food. Along with the metabolic function, it also affects your thyroid function and can help your thyroid to fight off damage caused by oxidative and stress-related injuries (3).
Many of the B vitamins are essential to support a healthy metabolism. One of the main functions the B vitamins have is to help your body metabolize proteins, fats, and carbs and to use the stored energy in the food you eat. If you are low on one of several of the B vitamins, which is fairly common, your metabolism won’t be able to function optimally.
Multivitamins for men can help improve thyroid function. Iodine is another mineral required to create thyroid hormones effectively which helps control the body’s metabolism. Low levels of iodine could slow your metabolism and lead to more food being stored as fat.
The additional iodine included in multivitamins can help support thyroid function and help to reverse the effects of a slow metabolism.
Multivitamins for men can fill dietary gaps. One of the primary reasons why someone may think to start taking a multivitamin is if they don’t have a well-balanced diet. Multivitamins have been created to act as your nutrition insurance policy. Many of the well-formulated products have at least 100% of your daily value of the majority of the ingredients listed on the side of the bottle.
These multivitamins are produced with science backing each ingredient to make sure that almost every aspect of your nutrition is being covered with a serving of the supplement. They provide a very convenient way to get in all your daily nourishment without having to change your entire lifestyle.
Multivitamins for men can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that more men in the world die from heart disease compared to any other cause (4). While the short-term effects have not been studied, supplementing long term with a multivitamin showed men to have a much lower incidence of cardiovascular disease episodes.
This is most likely due to the fact that multivitamins provide optimal nutrition for a prolonged period of time eliminating the likelihood that the individual will be malnourished.
A study in 2016 looking at almost 20,000 male physicians over the course of 20 years found that those who did supplement with a multivitamin daily had much lower incidences of cardiovascular disease compared to the physicians who did take the multi (5).
Multivitamins for men improve heart function. Products like Legion and SmartyPants contain the ingredient CoQ10. This particular coenzyme seems to help in the treatment of heart failure by improving the function of the heart, increasing ATP production (energy), and limiting overall oxidative damage.
A study involving 420 people with heart failure found that treatment with CoQ10 for two years helped to improve their symptoms and reduce their risk of dying from heart-related issues (6).
Multivitamins for men reduce the risk of several types of cancer. Multivitamins themselves may not have an effect on how lethal the cancer cells are, however, with proper nutrition enhanced with a multivitamin, they can help to reduce the likelihood that the cells will abnormally replicate in the first place.
A meta-analysis looking at around 50,000 individuals found that men who incorporated a daily multivitamin were 31% less likely to be diagnosed with cancer, although no difference was found for their women counterparts (6).
Another study in 2018 found consistent results in male test subjects where they were supplementing with multivitamins for short and long-term periods. In most of the cases, the men that took the multi had lower rates of cancer and certain types of cardiovascular diseases. There isn’t a link between cancer cell death and a multivitamin but rather overall lower cancer cell numbers (7).
The above results were reinforced with another trial including men with already confirmed cancer. They followed up with the men over a span of a decade as they took daily multivitamins. The men who were taking multivitamins showed a significant reduction in the occurrence of their total cancer compared to the group that was taking placebo pills.
These results can lead to the conclusion that multivitamins may have an effect on how cancer spreads once it is present in the body. Multivitamins may also have a positive effect on the overall health of the body and providing it support to fight off cancer (8).
Multivitamins for men have mood-boosting benefits. There are two markers that play a significant role in your mood – homocysteine level and blood B-vitamin levels. Certain multivitamins and cause lower homocysteine levels which is a hormone associated with stress and work to improve your B vitamin complex.
For example products like Legion do a fantastic job at this by incorporating very high doses of B12; 25000% of your daily value to be exact. This will play a crucial role in elevating your mood as well as supporting other key functions in the body.
A study in 2015 set up a trial with 58 seemingly healthy adults and found that the group who took multivitamins heavy on B vitamin levels had particularly higher moods than those who were given the placebo pill. This proved that the results were due to the ingredients rather than the act of taking the supplement (9).
Multivitamins for men facilitate effective recovery. Multivitamins can have great benefits to individuals who are pushing their bodies to maximum capacity as they provide the body with a vitamin and mineral boost.
A 2013 study found that the men who took multivitamins had significantly better thyroid function, better testosterone levels, and immune function. This proves again that compared to the placebo group, the multivitamins helped to improve total body health, and produces better results and activity throughout the participants (10).
Another study in 2012 looked at the effects vitamin D had on athletes. They found a strong correlation between having enough vitamin D and optimal muscle function. Increasing the levels of vitamin D in the athletes showed a reduction in inflammation, pain, and muscular issues while increasing protein synthesis in the muscles, ATP concentration, and overall physical performance (11).
Multivitamins for men help regulate stress. Many of us are plagued with constant stress; whether it’s from our jobs, financials, family, or other, life is simply stressful. Being exposed to prolonged stress can wreak havoc on your hormonal system, cause you to gain weight, decrease your mood and cognitive performance along with a host of other issues.
Many multivitamins include ingredients to help combat the effects of stress and ultimately work to reduce stress in general. Ingredients like B complex vitamins, ashwagandha, and Rhodiola help to reduce the symptoms that come along with stress as well as increase your overall resistance to life stressors.
A randomized control trial in 2011 looked at the effects of taking a multivitamin had on mood and stress in a group of healthy, older males. The scientist found that “compared to the placebo group, there was a significant reduction on an overall score of depression anxiety and stress scale and an improvement in alertness and daily functioning in the multivitamin group.” (12).
Multivitamins for men support eye health. As we age, many things in our bodies begin to change, and our eyes are included in that list of changes. Vitamins A, C, E, selenium, niacin (B3), and other B vitamins help to support eye health. Incorporating a supplement containing minerals and antioxidants has been proven to slow the progression of macular degeneration (13).
Lutein and zeaxanthin, which are part of the carotenoid family, also help to protect the eyes from harmful light waves. Several studies suggest that these plant compounds may help to prevent cataracts and prevent or improve upon the progression of macular degeneration (14, 15).
Recap
Multivitamins are not a ticket to perfect health. It’s important to incorporate balanced, healthy meals and exercise to do the majority of the leg work. Men’s multivitamins are geared towards male-specific aspects of health like prostate and testosterone support on top of overall general wellbeing.
Men’s multivitamins can help to plug any nutritional gaps that exist providing an insurance policy for people who chose to supplement with them.
Picking the right multi depending on your age, and goals are important to ensure you’re getting the right formula to support your results. This is especially important for older men and athletes as their nutritional requirements are very different.
For food4me.org’s #1 recommended multivitamin for men, click here.