Storing Supplemental Vitamins

Did you know that where you store your supplemental vitamins could change how effective they are?

Medical experts say the medicine cabinet in your bathroom isn’t the best of choices.

"Higher humidities cause a chemical process or change in the vitamin C. If the humidity level is very, very high-like in the high 90 percentile-then you’re going to lose potency of the vitamin C. It’s a permanent chemical change, " says Dr. Vicki Whitacre of the Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department.

It’s a change you can’t reverse, even if you remove the supplemental vitamins from the humidity and put it in a drier place, but the change won’t occur as long as air doesn’t get to the supplemental vitamins.

"If it’s still sealed, it’s not going to affect it, but once you open it-because of course you’re going to open it every day and seal it back up-and there’s no other place to store it other than your bathroom, make sure it’s in the evening before you take your shower, " says Whitacre.

The humidity also affects multi-vitamins, which contain vitamin C and also some of the B vitamins.