B-Vitamins Together or Separate?
Many vitamin B5 acne treatments include a host of other B-vitamins in addition to B5, but a few (such as Clear5) do not. There are plenty of other oral clear skin treatments that also pile on the B-vitamins, since many of them are regarded as aiding healthy skin. So what are the benefits of including the entire family of B-vitamins in a single treatment, and what are the downsides?
It’s no secret that the B-family vitamins work well together within the body. Many of them naturally compliment each other and are used together in the same bodily functions. That said, they are still very different chemical substances, and your body’s requirements can differ greatly for each one. A healthy dose of vitamin B6 may be a toxic dose of vitamin B3. Some people get stuck on the idea in that all your B-vitamins should be taken in similar doses, but while this may sound good to some holistic health nuts, it’s not an intelligent or medically sound position.
While there are plenty of chemical reactions within the body that require multiple B-vitamins, it’s not true that taking other B-vitamins will necessarily help the actual absorption or effectiveness of another. For instance, taking other B-vitamins is not going to make vitamin B5 more easily absorbed, or more effective at combating acne (unless you have a deficiency in those other vitamins). This is usually just marketing hype. In reality, some B-vitamins compete for the same receptor molecules, and can actually inhibit maximum absorbance.
While small amounts of all the B-vitamins may be helpful for those wishing to make sure they are covering any possible deficiency, the doses of most of these are typically too small to make for an effective treatment, and can ultimately just end up interfering with the real active ingredients. I noticed this early on when my own treatment, Clear5, was giving inferior results after we added a group of other B-vitamins that were supposedly helpful in promoting clear skin. Our product actually became less effective.
There is another downside as well: increased likelihood of side effects. While most B-vitamins are relatively safe even at high doses, a few of them are much more prone to negative reactions. Niacin (B3) can cause flushed skin and rashes, for example. Especially if your doses are high enough to actually make a difference, you run a higher risk of causing some unpleasant side effects.
It’s for these reasons that we ended up keeping our list of ingredients in Clear5 very short, without a ton of additional B-family vitamins. Taking a daily multivitamin is always a good idea, but multivitamins are not treatments, and you shouldn’t expect a treatment that looks like a multivitamin to work very well at solving any particular health problem.
