I take 5 to 20 pills a day, as well as three kinds of odorless white powder. I hear the endless refrain, “Isn’t it dangerous to take so many drugs? You should be careful!” These aren’t party drugs or pick-me-ups. These are vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients carefully researched and selected to improve and lengthen my quality of life, through consultation with my doctor. The human body is the most complex machine we know, and it requires many different input ingredients to fight disease, avoid damage, and stay in a good mood.

Until the age of fifty, most people only take a multi-vitamin, if anything, and assume that pills are only for when their body starts breaking down and they need to slow down or reverse the decline. What happened to that old saw, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? You perform maintenance on your car and regularly change the oil – isn’t your health more important than your car?

It’s not risky for me to take supplements, it’s risky for you not to. With the wonders of technological progress keeping you indoors all day, do you get enough sunlight to naturally produce the Vitamin D your body needs to function? If you follow a diet low in unprocessed animal products, are you lacking crucial Vitamin B12? Nobody talks about these risks because mitigating them would require deviation from the norm.

The default option in any situation is to do nothing. It doesn’t feel like you’re making a choice, but you are. There’s a cost to every option, including that default option. What if you had to explicitly decide, “These are the specific concentrations of each of these vital nutrients that I want in my body in order to properly function”? If you had to start from a baseline of zero ounces of everything, you would have a lot of planning to do. You might consult a medical professional about what levels you want of everything and then attempt to go from zero to those optimal levels. So why is it any different when you didn’t start at zero?

This is true in every area, not just personal health. When given a default option of doing nothing, most people fail to save any money for retirement. Alcohol is socially acceptable poison because everybody else is using it too. Other drugs are frowned upon and often illegal, but they might have beneficial effects when used properly. What else do we do just because it’s the default option? Going to college for four years. Eating three meals a day (and every day). Waking up and responding to our phone notifications immediately.

You make more choices than you realize. Identify those choices and decide whether you want those default options.

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I am not a medical professional, and this article is not medical advice. Nutritional supplements should be used to supplement, not replace, a healthy diet. Every body is different and needs personalized recommendations. You should consult your personal doctor before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or supplement regime.