A few things to consider --
1. Multivitamins are a multi-billion dollar industry, and the main companies profiting from this industry are the same "big pharma" companies who many here would decry for encouraging the "take a magic pill and everything is OK" mentality. To test this assertion -- don't look at YOUR vitamin supplement. Go to a store and look at who makes all the big sellers. Consider the types of customer those companies & their advertisements appeal to. Are you that type of person? If not, you have to ask yourself why you're still taking a multivitamin.
2. Generally speaking, multi-vitamins, in just about every single study I've ever seen, have proven themselves to be close to useless. Absorption can be too poor with some vitamins, too high with others -- all in the same pill!
And yes, too high DOES matter -- your body does not instantly, magically balance itself to never have too much of anything. Even in the cases where having high vitamin levels does not equal toxicity, having high vitamin levels can be anywhere from useless to harmful.
Do a search on "gene expression and vitamin doses." The significant majority of the research is leaning towards the idea that many if not most vitamins work through gene expression -- that is, they actually signal your genes to start working in a certain fashion. In these studies, too much of a vitamin can actually reverse gene expression.
In addition, vitamins and minerals can often aid in regulating each other, so when you're getting too much of one and not enough of another, that imbalance can influence your ability to properly metabolize & excrete other vitamins and minerals. I learned this the hard way by spending about two years of my life dealing with lead poisoning that led to all sorts of other imbalances (some of which I'm still re-balancing).
4. If any of you did have an imbalance (and yeah, they occur VERY frequently, especially among athletes and among people with tightly controlled diets), a modern nutritionist is not going to tell you, "just take a multi, your body will naturally balance itself." Instead, they would identify the actual imbalance, suggest dietary modification, and IF that failed, they would suggest a specific, targeted program to restore the balance. Taking a multi-vitamin is like taking all the medicines in the pharmacy instead of identifying which medicine you need.
And point 4 brings me to...how many of you guys actually get your blood & hair levels tested? If someone were considering starting a cycle, or were having issues with a cycle of gear, folks here would say, "Did you do your blood tests?"
Why is something as major as vitamin and mineral balance not given the same degree of respect?
Hair and blood tests aren't that expensive, especially considering that you might only have to do them once every year or two. You have to shop around for the right tests & a lab that isn't going to try to sell you their specific product line, but excellent labs do exist. I'm not going to suggest any in particular because I don't want to be accused of marketing -- besides there might be better ones out there than the ones I used, I don't want to limit anyone. But again, please consider my experiences -- if I had done a nutrient absorption & utilization test once every two years or so, I would have easily avoided a major health issue.
When you have nutrient imbalances (and like I said, they can be common with athletes especially those who have a limited range of food types...a situation sadly common among younger bodybuilders), it can keep you working at less than ideal, and the longer the imbalances exist, the longer they take to put back on track.
If you really care about this health stuff, just consider the merits of actually determining what treatments you need, instead of assuming one single badly packaged, poorly absorbed treatment is going to somehow magically cure everything, and just as magically self-regulate so you never get harmed by it.
The financial costs might be a LITTLE more in the short run, but will be a LOT less in the long run.
