Taking supplements can be different for women — and what's in the bottle may not always be accurate

The amount of supplements offered in local pharmacies and supermarkets is often enough to grant them their own aisle, full of brightly-colored bottles of all shapes and sizes promoting the wellness of hair and nails, the heart, sleep or bones. “But so often the difference between the men versus women’s is the color of the bottle and not what is inside.” Although people had been using herbal medicines to supplement nutrients in their diet for centuries, Polish biochemist Casimer Funk is credited with coining the term "vitamins" in 1920, referring to the substances not produced in the body that we supplemented by diet. “That doesn’t mean that everything needs to be at different doses, but at the very minimum, we need to understand: Should those be recommended at a different dose or with different ingredients to enhance absorption, or some of those things.” The National Institutes of Health acknowledged the need for more nutritional research for women in its 2020-2030 strategic plan, which listed nutritional differences in women, along with differences in nutritional needs during pregnancy and lactation and across a woman’s life cycle as some of its research priorities. “Inherent within this plan and its implementation are research approaches and activities that address the roles of sex and gender in health and disease; promoting participation of women in clinical nutrition research; and integrating sex as a biological variable in basic, preclinical, and translational nutrition research.” Instead of comparing men and women to understand differences in nutritional needs, it might be more useful to study how nutritional needs vary across a woman’s life cycle, Smith-Ryan added. “We tell women when they’re 60 years old that their bone mass is low and try to pump them full of calcium and vitamin D,” Scourboutakos told Salon in a phone interview.