The Case for Hitting Pause on All Your Supplements

Written by Caitlin Carlson
7 min read

April 10, 2025 — Maybe you swear by fish oil. Maybe you had a vitamin D deficiency a decade ago and just never stopped taking it. And then you added creatine because everyone is talking about it. At some point, two or three others got added to the mix and you take them diligently every day with your caffeine supplement, er, morning coffee, or maybe some electrolyte-spiked water. 

But how do you know if any of these supps are doing anything? 

Well, you don’t. And that’s why it may make sense for you to hit pause on all your supplements and do a “supplement reset,” says Zachary Mulvihill, MD, an integrative medicine specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine.

“I think people end up in a spot where over the years they have a snowballing supplement bag and maybe it made sense then, but it doesn't make sense now and it's expensive and in the worst case, hurting them a little bit,” he says.

For this reason — and a few others we’ll get into — it might make sense to do a supplement reset to reevaluate what you’re taking. Here’s how.

Supplements are squishy. 

First, vitamins and supplements are loosely regulated by the FDA, meaning it’s critical to purchase supps from reputable brands with third-party certifications so you know you’re getting what the bottle says — and nothing else.

Second, many supplements may not have enough, or any, research to back up their safety and efficacy, says David S. Seres, MD, director of medical nutrition at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. And many of those that do have solid research behind them are only proven to work for people who have a true deficiency.

And third, taking supplements without medical guidance could be iffy in certain situations. Seres points to a well-known prostate cancer study called SELECT that found men taking vitamin E supplements elevated their prostate cancer risk by 17%. 

All this is to say: Do you need the supplements you take, and what’s your real reason for taking them?

Many patients come to Mulvihill taking multiple supplements, sometimes 10 or more, and he goes through them one by one. “A lot of times they're not even sure why they're taking X supplement or Y supplement,” he says.

Hint: “I saw it on Instagram” is not a legit reason.

Another common pitfall he sees is patients placing too much value on their pills and powders. “Supplements are that — supplements,” Mulvihill says. They're to supplement changes in your diet and healthy lifestyle habits, and the expected benefit is usually pretty small.

“That's not to say that they can't be helpful to people,” he says, “but they're really the most helpful and the least risk of harm when they're done in tandem with complementary changes to your diet and your lifestyle.”

That goes for overall health, but also for, say, any athletic performance benefits you’re looking to achieve.

Creatine and protein are staples in athletes’ pantries, but “the thing that moves the needle most is training,” says Jose Antonio, PhD, co-founder of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and a professor at Nova Southeastern University. “If you're not training, then all the other stuff doesn't matter.”

After that, he’d put proper nutrition and sleep neck-and-neck — and then supplements. Whether you’re talking about B vitamins or magnesium, Antonio says they have the potential to help to some extent, but not on the same level as training, sleep, and proper nutrition. 

If you have a medicine cabinet full of pills and potions or have been taking something for a long time, a supplement reset may be worth considering. Here’s why: 

It can give you a clean slate to build upon. “When you take too many different things at the same time, it's hard to say what’s helping and what's not,” Mulvihill says. Pausing all but one supplement and then adding them back in one by one can help you be more strategic in your supplementation. It might be that after pausing one supplement, you ultimately bring it back (maybe even at a higher dose, but that’s something that should be done under a doctor’s supervision, he says).

It gives you a mental reset. Antonio says that taking natural breaks from time to time could have a positive psychological impact, and it’s something he does himself. Just like you might want to skip the gym on vacation, leaving your vitamins and supplements at home is a way to take a “mental holiday” from the routine. “I can just get up, drink coffee, look at the ocean, and that's it,” he says.

You might not need it year-round. In the case of vitamin D, seasonal pauses make a lot of sense. “The main source of vitamin D is from the sun,” Mulvihill says, which is tough to get enough of during the winter. “For most people [in the Northeast], I recommend they take a reasonable dose of vitamin D from September through March,” he says. Then, they “wash out” from April through August when they’re probably getting plenty of sunlight. There are exceptions, including people with severe osteoporosis or who are at higher skin cancer risk who may be guided by their doctors to take vitamin D indefinitely. Mulvihill recommends keeping tabs on your D levels via regular blood tests, especially because it’s a fat-soluble vitamin, meaning it hangs around in your fat tissue for a long time versus water-soluble vitamins like B and C vitamins that you pee out in excess.

It might help you determine if it’s working. “The effect [of supplements] is subtle, and sometimes people don't really notice the benefit until they stop it,” Mulvihill says. He recently experienced this with ashwagandha — it wasn’t until he ran out and didn’t take it for a few weeks that he realized that he did feel it was helping him to sleep better and feel more energized. 

However, a short-term break may not be enough for you to simply feel differently, Antonio cautions. For omega-3s, for example, there is data showing that it helps your cardiovascular system, but it could take years or decades for you to have any symptoms of cardiovascular disease (and, of course, omega-3s alone won’t prevent that). Similarly with multivitamins, Antonio doesn’t believe someone would feel differently after stopping it for a few weeks. 

While taking a break and gauging how you feel is certainly not the most scientific approach, it could be the only real option for certain supplements. “It’s hard to test for some things like whether ashwagandha is having an effect on stress, and even with [supplements like] iron, it’s trickier to test for,” Mulvihill says. “I always measure something if I can measure it.” 

It might make blood tests more accurate. Certain blood tests, like the vitamin B12 test, can be sensitive to recent dietary intake. So if you took B12 the day (or maybe even week) before having your blood levels tested, your test could come back over the upper limit of normal, Mulvihill says. A pause before a blood test could help ensure you don’t skew those test results. Similarly, creatine intake may lead to higher blood creatinine levels, a kidney health marker, according to the National Kidney Foundation. 

It can help you tap into the mind-body connection. “I'm trying to get people to pay closer attention to their body and their mind and their physical symptoms,” Mulvihill says. Being more mindful about how you feel, including your energy levels, focus, and workout performance, for example, can be beneficial in and of itself — even if you end up not being able to connect those feelings to a certain supplement. 

In an ideal world, you’d work with your doctor for a personalized approach that includes assessing your goals and medical history. “It's hard to give advice about supplements in general because there's so many and they are very different,” Mulvihill says. That said, there are a few parameters to apply to your reset, from Mulvihill and Antonio: 

  • Take a supplement consistently for at least three months before taking a pause to allow it to build up in your system enough to have a potential effect.
  • Take a two- to four-week pause so you’re off the supplement long enough for it to get out of your system.
  • Consider journaling about your subjective feelings — energy levels, mood, focus, how well you’re sleeping, stress, etc. — during your reset so you have a log to refer back to.
  • Consider tracking heart rate metrics like resting heart rate and heart rate variability with a fitness tracker, as they may give you clues into your overall well-being.
  • If you’re an athlete (amateur or otherwise), pay attention to all your performance metrics. 

Being more intentional from the start with any vitamins or supplements — rather than adding the latest herb trending on TikTok — is ideal.

Seres' advice is to think first about medical necessity. Work with your doctor and get regular blood tests to identify deficiencies, if any. “It is absolutely true that if you have a true deficiency, and this is something that is medically diagnosed, that you should take a supplement to fix that deficiency,” he says. 

If you were Mulvihill’s patient, he’d talk to you about your health goals and then recommend one lifestyle change (say, setting a consistent bedtime), one diet change (maybe it’s eating more protein), one mindfulness technique (maybe starting the day with a five-minute meditation), and one supplement (which could be ashwagandha to help manage stress). He creates these holistic treatment plans because they aren’t overly reliant on any one thing and collectively can add up to impactful benefits.