Expensive Piss: A Scumbag’s Guide to Vitamins

I’m sure you’ve seen the marketing campaigns. All of the supplements and powders that promise to fix every aspect of your life, from your complete lack of energy to the brittleness of your nails. You’ve seen skincare products boasting collagen, peptides, and seemingly random letters representing Vitamins that will somehow reverse time itself.

A lot of this is snake oil. Let’s break it down.

I am someone who (quite literally) drinks the nutrient Kool Aid. When I’m not on a bender, I take multivitamins every morning with my crazy pills. Half of my meals are meal replacement shakes that I add electrolytes and “miracle greens” to. Up until I started researching this topic, I had a misconception. I thought that if I had extra vitamins and minerals in my diet, it would buff me for the days (or weeks, or months) when the only things I eat are cigarettes and whiskey. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

Ingestibles

Every person has a daily value of nutrients they need to be a functional human being.

If you take in more nutrients than you need, your body has three choices: piss it out, shit it out, or save it for later. You don’t become some super-charged demi-god for a day if you go over. That being said, your body doesn’t absorb nutrients perfectly. Digestion, other nutrients, substance use, medications, and the supplement itself all affect absorption.

If you have a deficiency, taking a supplement is a good move. Most people don’t have deficiencies and get what they need through their diet. Taking a multivitamin on top of that is just a waste of money. Here’s how some deficiencies may show up in skincare:

If you think you might be deficient in something, you should talk to your doctor.

Here’s the good shit:

If you stack supplements and fortified food (like protein bars), you could be getting yourself in trouble. Fat soluble Vitamins (A, D, E and K) store themselves in your fat for later use. This is an evolutionary trait, a survival mechanism from our hunter/gatherer past. Your body can store these vitamins for later, but if you keep stuffing the warehouse forever eventually shit starts breaking. I go deeper on that storage/depletion system in Nutrient Storage: Your Body's Ponzi Scheme. This can lead to things like liver damage, kidney stones, bone pain, and neurological issues. This isn’t something you would know immediately either, it’ll hit you down the line. If you’re taking a heroic dose of nutrients every day, get to counting.

So where’s the snake oil?

Multivitamins

These won’t fix your problems, they’re more of a nutrition patch. If you’re over 50, you might consider taking them because your ability to absorb vitamin B12 is decreasing and you need more vitamin D and calcium. Same goes for restricted diets: vegans, vegetarians, eating disorders. If you’re pregnant, take prenatals. For the most part, expensive piss.

Biotin (B7)

You don’t even have to type the whole word “skincare” in your browser before someone tries to sell you biotin. While biotin does play an important role in skin and hair health, deficiency is extremely rare. If you’re pregnant, you might become marginally deficient but prenatals will cover that. If you eat a shitton of raw eggs, you’ll probably become deficient too. One outlier here is alcoholism. Biotin deficiency affects 15% of chronic alcoholics. If that’s you, you might want to supplement.

Collagen

Equally, if not more, marketed as a life-changing skincare supplement as biotin. If you filter out the studies that were not funded by pharmaceutical or beauty companies, you’ll find that collagen has little to no effect………… hmmm……….

Collagen proteins are massive and hard to break down. If you want to drink the Kool-Aid here, go for collagen + peptides, which basically means collagen protein broken down into smaller pieces (peptides). The smaller pieces THEORETICALLY will absorb into your body more effectively and they MIGHT signal for repairs, but they will definitely mix into your drinks better. As I often say, the best gaslight is self-ignited.

Vitamin A

Do not megadose vitamin A. Not only will it damage your skin and hair, it can also cause liver damage. For skincare, stick with topical retinoids (and use sunscreen like your life depends on it, because it kind of does, see: Inferno).

Now let’s get topical.

Retinoids (Vitamin A)

If I scared you off with Vitamin A, rest assured: as a topical treatment, it slaps. It helps with acne, collagen support, cell turnover, photoaging (aging caused by the sun). The prescribed retinoids have stronger evidence towards their effects than their OTC counterparts, so don’t expect a miracle here. I like The Ordinary’s retinol (link product).

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is another powerhouse topical. It’s an antioxidant, supports sun protection, collagen synthesis, hyperpigmentation. This one’s kind of weird though because not all Vitamin C is created equal. L-ascorbic acid is the most studied form and it breaks down pretty easily (same). Light, heat, oxygen, water can all contribute to oxidation. Buy it in dark bottles and if the liquid becomes dark, stop using it.

Some products use sodium ascorbyl phosphate and magnesium ascorbyl phosphate as Vitamin C. These are the salts of Vitamin C, and are typically gentler and less acidic. They’re also less studied than their L dash sister, so take that with a grain of SALT (haha).

Niacinamide (B3)

GOATed, truly. If you want to go deeper, read the full niacinamide ingredient guide. This topical is super lightweight and helps with your skin barrier, oil regulation, and inflammation. Hardly ever meets a skin type it doesn’t like too. Check your cabinet, you’re probably already using it.

Vitamin E

Antioxidant, barrier support, works well with Vitamin C. Not enough evidence for me to go out of my way for it though.

Peptides and collagen

We already covered how oral collagen supplements are suspicious in value, topically it’s no different, but I am getting ahead of myself here.

Proteins, like collagen, are long chains of amino acids. Peptides are small chains of amino acids. If amino acids are letters, peptides are words and proteins are paragraphs.

There are several kinds of peptides. Some act as signaling molecules that may encourage repair processes, while others carry minerals like copper into the skin. Other peptides are marketed as wrinkle relaxers or “Botox in a bottle,” but the evidence there gets shaky fast.

So why are collagen topicals suspicious? Because collagen proteins are HUGE. They’re so big that all they can do is basically sit on top of your skin, they can’t get in there and work any magic. At best, it temporarily plumps the surface. It is not rebuilding your face.

Peptides, being much smaller, have a better shot. SOME peptides might be able to penetrate your skin deep enough to send signals or carry minerals or brainwash you, but again the research on this is limited and leans in favor of the companies that funded it.

Fuck, that was a lot. I need a cigarette after all of this research.

To sum it up: deficiencies matter, nutrition matters, but most people do not need a shelf full of miracle supplements. Vitamin A, C and B3 are proven topical heavy hitters, and you should be skeptical of anything promising transcendence through gummies.

Xoxo,
Arielle

This article is educational and based on publicly available research, not medical advice. If you think you have a deficiency or medical condition, talk to an actual doctor instead of a skincare blog run by a literal scumbag.