“Should I be feeling the effects of my multivitamin?”

“How can I tell if my multivitamin is working?”

“Why don’t I see or feel a difference yet?”

Whether you’re a long-time vitamin devotee or you recently started the habit (either way, a quality multi can go a long way toward supporting nutrient needs), chances are at some point along your journey, you’ve had the same questions—and you’re not alone. In today’s fast-paced, results-oriented world, the notion that you need to see—or feel—the effects of a supplement in order for it to be doing its job right is certainly tempting.

Here’s the thing, though: Judging a multivitamin using purely physical indicators isn’t always the best approach. There’s way more to consider when assessing how well a multivitamin performs in the body—namely, the formulation. By equating solely physical sensations—or lack thereof—with efficacy, you may be missing the forest for the trees. It’s more about building healthy habits, and realizing that well-chosen rituals—whether it’s taking your vitamins, getting in some movement, whipping up a nutritionally balanced smoothie, prepping a homemade snack, or simply embracing a meditation practice—can have a cumulative impact over time.

All this is to say: When it comes to your multivitamin, performance matters—and that means you should look to formulation as a more reliable metric over feeling. Here are five ways our science-first, efficacy-driven approach applies to our hero product, Essential for Women 18+.

✔Auburn University Led Clinical Study

If you’re familiar with us, you know we lead with the science. Assembling an in-house team of scientists with decades of experience between them—and establishing a Scientific Advisory Board comprised of renowned medical doctors, nutritionists, and scientists—is just one aspect of developing products that deliver on their promises. Another important element? Clinical testing. In a clinical trial led by Auburn University, Essential for Women 18+ was shown to increase vitamin D, omega-3 DHA, and folate levels in 12 weeks.* (Read about our clinical study design here.)

✔ United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Verified

Our commitment to unyielding transparency is driven by the belief that you deserve to know exactly what you’re putting into your body and why—which is where third-party quality certification comes into play. Essential for Women 18+ is USP Verified, which means that the United States Pharmacopeia validated that the nutrients on Ritual’s label is what's actually in the multivitamins. In other words, you can rest assured that what you see is what you get. To be clear, earning the USP verification is a really big deal, as it sets one of the highest bars for product transparency—well above and beyond the industry standard.

✔ Novel Capsule Delivery System

Essential for Women 18+, like all of our multivitamins, uses a delayed-release capsule scientifically designed to bypass the stomach and deliver nutrients to the small intestine—an ideal place for nutrient absorption. Since they’re designed to dissolve later, delayed-release capsules help preserve nutrients in their intended forms and create a slow, gentle release of nutrients to mimic the body’s natural digestive process. An added benefit? Their gentle-on-the-stomach design means they don’t need to be taken with food.*

✔ Completed Dissolution Study

Nutrients may be more impactful when they make it past the stomach to the small intestine—this is why it was important for us to evaluate the ability of our nutrients to make it past the stomach. How’d we do it? By performing a test on our aforementioned delayed-release capsules using standard in vitro tablet disintegration procedures. Put more simply: We recreated the physiological conditions reflective of the human gastrointestinal tract. The findings backed up what our rigorous research told us: that our delayed-release capsules (DRcapⓇ) bypassed the stomach almost completely to release nutrients in the small intestine.*

✔ Bioavailable Key Nutrient Forms

A multivitamin is only as good as it is bioavailable. Bioavailability refers to the extent to which a substance becomes entirely available to its biological destination(s)—that is, how successfully the nutrient reaches its intended landing place. (1) It doesn’t matter how nutrient-dense your multi is—unless it contains key nutrient forms that the body can efficiently use. We aim to use key nutrient forms that the body can efficiently utilize, including:

• Magnesium: Ritual multivitamins contain dimagnesium malate, a chelated form of magnesium shown to be absorbable by the body.*

• Iron: We use ferrous bisglycinate, which is a gentle, chelated form of iron.*

• B12: We use methylcobalamin, an active form of B12.*

• Folate: We use 5-MTHF, a bioavailable form of Folate.*

References:

1. Price, G., & Patel, D. A. (2020). ...Bioavailability. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing LLC.