Awesome Defence: covering the gaps you can't see (and maybe extending your life by 6 years)
Nutrition
I don't know about you, but I've spent years working with people who do most things right. They eat well. They train. They sleep most nights. And they still feel like they're running at 80%. The reason, more often than not, isn't a missing protocol. It's a stack of small micronutrient gaps that nobody's looking at. UK survey data has been flagging them for years: vitamin D status is poor across most of the population, magnesium intake is often below recommended levels, and iodine intake has slid as people moved away from dairy. Awesome Defence is what I take to close those gaps.
Key takeaways from this blog:
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Around 50% of the population has low vitamin D status (Holick, Journal of Investigative Medicine review). Defence delivers 2,500 IU per serving.
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Roughly 60% of adults don't reach recommended magnesium intake (DiNicolantonio et al., Open Heart). Defence uses 300mg of magnesium citrate, a far better-absorbed form than the magnesium oxide most multivitamins use.
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B vitamins act as cofactors across most steps of energy production (Kennedy, Nutrients 2016). Token doses don't move the needle.
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Magnesium is a cofactor for more than 300 enzymatic reactions and is required for ATP to be biologically active (Gröber, Schmidt & Kisters, Nutrients 2015).
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Vitamin D supplementation reduces the risk of acute respiratory infection (Martineau et al., BMJ 2017, meta-analysis of 25 RCTs covering 10,933 participants).
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The COMOS study found that consuming a multi-vitamin could increase your life by 6 years from a reduction in all cause mortality
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Defence is dosed for optimal, not sufficient. Sufficient keeps you from getting ill. Optimal helps you perform.
Table of contents
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Why micronutrient gaps are so common, even with a good diet
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What gaps actually do to you
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The energy system: B vitamins and magnesium
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Immune function: the thing people only check when it's too late
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Stress, sleep, and the nervous system
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Thyroid: the quiet system underneath your metabolism
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Why most multivitamins don't do much
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What we built into Awesome Defence
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FAQ
1. Why micronutrient gaps are so common, even with a good diet
Let's level with each other. "Good diet" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in conversations about nutrition. Most people I work with eat better than the UK average and still don't hit the levels of vitamin D, magnesium, iodine and selenium their body actually needs to perform.
Some of this is geography. The UK gets so little sun for so much of the year that the NHS itself recommends a vitamin D supplement from October through March. Some of it is dietary fashion. Iodine intake has dropped as people moved away from dairy without picking up sea vegetables or fish in its place. Some of it is soil. UK farmland is selenium-poor, and the food grown in it carries that forward.
Then there's the demand side. The more you train, the more you stress, the worse you sleep, the more nutrients your body burns through (Nieman, Exercise Immunology Review 1998; Gleeson, Nestle Nutrition Institute Workshop Series 2013). Most people are putting more demand on themselves than they were a decade ago, while their intake hasn't really moved. That's the gap.
It doesn't feel like a deficiency. It feels like being a bit flat. Which is part of why it gets ignored for years.
2. What gaps actually do to you
This is the bit I want to be honest about. A small micronutrient gap won't show up as one big symptom. It shows up as a smudge across several systems at once.
Energy that fades earlier than it used to. Recovery that takes a day longer than it should. The cold that everyone in the office got, that's still in your chest two weeks later. Sleep that doesn't quite restore. Stress that hits harder than it did when you were 28.
And here's why fixing it one nutrient at a time rarely works. You buy vitamin D for the winter. Then magnesium for sleep. Then zinc for that immune dip. Then B12 because you read something on Instagram. Four bottles. Four schedules. And you're still trying to plug holes in a leaking bucket.
The problem isn't the ingredients. It's the approach. Your systems aren't separate. Energy production needs the same B vitamins that immune function needs. Magnesium shows up in nervous system regulation and ATP synthesis. Cover the foundation properly and several systems quietly come back online together.
3. The energy system: B vitamins and magnesium
Energy isn't really about calories. It's about whether your body can convert those calories into ATP, the molecule your cells actually use.
That conversion runs on micronutrients acting as cofactors. Kennedy's 2016 review in Nutrients walked through this in detail: all eight B vitamins play closely interlinked roles in cellular energy metabolism, DNA and RNA synthesis, and the production of neurochemicals. Magnesium is required for ATP to even be biologically active, and Gröber, Schmidt and Kisters (Nutrients 2015) confirmed it's a cofactor in more than 300 enzymatic reactions. Iron and B12 keep oxygen moving through your blood, which means they keep your muscles and brain fuelled.
When any of these run low, energy production becomes less efficient. You don't crash. You just dim.
EFSA's authorised health claims back this up: B vitamins contribute to normal energy-yielding metabolism, and magnesium contributes to a reduction in tiredness and fatigue. That's not marketing language, that's the regulator's position based on the evidence.
4. Immune function: the thing people only check when it's too late
Most people don't think about their immune system until they're three days into a cold. By that point, your body's already negotiating with whatever it caught. The work to support immune function happens months earlier, in the basics you're putting in every day.
Vitamin D is central to immune signalling. Martineau et al.'s 2017 BMJ meta-analysis of 25 randomised controlled trials, covering 10,933 participants, found vitamin D supplementation reduces the risk of acute respiratory tract infection. The effect was largest in people who started out vitamin D deficient, which (given UK status data) is roughly half the population for a good chunk of the year.
Zinc is essential for immune cell development. Prasad's 2008 review in Molecular Medicine documented how zinc deficiency causes severe immune dysfunction, particularly in T helper cells. Selenium powers your antioxidant defence. Vitamin C protects cells from oxidative stress.
Calder, Carr, Gombart and Eggersdorfer's 2020 review in Nutrients pulled all of this together. Their argument: adequate intake of vitamins A, B6, B12, C, D, E and folate, plus zinc, iron, selenium, magnesium and copper, is essential for the immune system to function properly. And the daily intakes needed to support optimal immune function are often higher than the current recommended dietary allowances.
You're not preventing every bug. You're giving your body the materials to handle the bugs properly when they show up.
5. Stress, sleep, and the nervous system
Modern life is stressful, and not in a way most people are willing to admit to themselves. Your nervous system doesn't care whether the threat is a tiger or a 9am Monday meeting. It responds by burning through specific micronutrients faster, and magnesium is top of the list.
Gröber and colleagues described magnesium's role in nervous system regulation and neuronal excitability in their 2015 review. When you've been running on adrenaline for weeks, magnesium gets depleted, which is part of why chronically stressed people often describe feeling wired but exhausted at the same time. Vitamin B6 contributes to neurotransmitter synthesis, including the pathways that produce serotonin and GABA (Kennedy, 2016).
EFSA's authorised claims line up here too: magnesium contributes to normal psychological function, and vitamin B6 contributes to the regulation of hormonal activity.
This is one of the most under-appreciated reasons people feel "off" without being ill. The intake hasn't matched the demand they're putting on themselves.
6. Thyroid: the quiet system underneath your metabolism
Energy, temperature regulation, metabolic rate. All of it runs through your thyroid.
Iodine is required to make thyroid hormones in the first place. Selenium is required to convert them into the active form your cells actually use. Intake of both is patchy in typical UK diets, particularly if you've cut dairy or don't eat much fish.
Low intake here doesn't always show up as a clinical issue. But it can subtly drag on energy, metabolic efficiency, and how you feel day to day.
7. Why most multivitamins don't do much
Here's where I'm going to be a bit blunt. Most multivitamins on the UK market aren't really designed to work. They're designed to look like they could work.
A multivitamin isn't about the number of ingredients on the label. It's not about hitting %NRVs across as many lines as possible. It's not about the colour of the bottle. It's about whether the nutrients inside it are at doses that match the research, in forms your body can actually absorb.
Two issues come up again and again.
Underdosing. Most multis use sufficiency dosing. That's the amount of a nutrient you need to avoid a deficiency disease. Optimal dosing is the amount the research associates with functioning at your best. The gap can be huge. Standard multivitamins give you 400 IU of vitamin D, the historical RDA. A dose-response analysis in Nutrients (Veugelers and Ekwaru, 2014) suggested the optimal intake for most adults sits closer to 2,990 IU. That's a 7x gap, not a rounding error.
Cheap ingredient forms. Magnesium oxide is cheap, common, and barely absorbed. Magnesium citrate costs more and your body actually uses it. Most multis go with the cheap form because it lets them put a big number on the label without paying for it. The devil's in the dose, but it's also in the form.
8. What we built into Awesome Defence
Defence is the foundation. Not a fix-everything pill, not a magic bullet. The baseline cover for the micronutrients most likely to fall short in a UK adult who's training, working, and trying to perform.
That wasn't complicated to say. Winner. Now let's get geeky for those who want it.
Per serving (4 capsules):
|
Nutrient |
Dose |
%NRV |
|---|---|---|
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Vitamin D3 |
2,500 IU (62.5μg) |
1,250% |
|
Magnesium (citrate) |
300mg |
80% |
|
Vitamin K |
1,000μg |
1,333% |
|
Zinc |
15mg |
150% |
|
Vitamin C |
80mg |
100% |
|
Iron |
20mg |
143% |
|
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) |
100mg |
1,667% |
|
B12 |
12.5μg |
500% |
|
Selenium |
55μg |
100% |
|
Iodine |
120μg |
80% |
Plus the rest of the B-complex, vitamin A, vitamin E, calcium, copper, manganese, biotin and folic acid, all at their research optimal dose.
A few specifics worth knowing. The vitamin D is 2,500 IU, broadly aligned with the Veugelers and Ekwaru dose-response work. The magnesium is 300mg of citrate, not oxide. The B5 is 100mg, not the 6mg most multis use. Every form was chosen for bioavailability, not for cost.
4 capsules a day, splittable as 2 in the morning and 2 in the evening if you prefer. It pairs with Awesome Omega for what I'd consider a complete daily health stack.
At £24 for 30 servings, that's £0.80 per day. About ¼ of the price of a coffee, except this one is quietly closing gaps you can't see.
FAQs
Do I really need a multivitamin if I eat well?
Honestly, probably yes. UK NDNS data shows vitamin D, magnesium, iodine and selenium intake commonly sits below recommended levels even in balanced diets. Calder et al. (Nutrients 2020) noted that the daily micronutrient intakes needed to support optimal immune function are often higher than current RDAs. "Eating well" helps. It rarely closes the gap on its own, particularly in the UK where soil, weather and dairy avoidance are all working against you.
Why 2,500 IU of vitamin D when most multis use 400 IU?
Because the research supports it. Veugelers and Ekwaru (Nutrients, 2014) found the optimal vitamin D intake for most adults sits around 2,990 IU per day. The 400 IU standard is sufficiency dosing, enough to avoid rickets, not enough to support optimal function. Martineau et al.'s 2017 BMJ meta-analysis also linked higher vitamin D status to reduced respiratory infection risk. We dose for optimal.
Magnesium citrate vs magnesium oxide, does the form really matter?
Yes. Magnesium oxide is cheap and shows up in most low-cost multivitamins, but it's poorly absorbed. Magnesium citrate (the form in Defence) is significantly better absorbed and tolerated. Given magnesium's role as a cofactor in over 300 enzymatic reactions (Gröber et al., 2015), the form matters as much as the number on the label.
Can I take Defence alongside other supplements?
Yes. Defence is a foundation, not a replacement for targeted supplements. It pairs naturally with Awesome Omega for a daily stack, and works alongside Creatine, Hydrate, Protein or Night without overlap. The one to watch is a second iron-containing multivitamin. You don't need two of those running at once.
Is Defence safe in pregnancy?
Speak to your doctor. Defence contains vitamin A (caution required in pregnancy) and vitamin K (caution if you're on anti-coagulants). It's not formulated specifically for pregnancy. If you're pregnant, breastfeeding, or on medication, run it past a GP or registered nutritionist first.
Will I actually feel a difference?
It depends on where you're starting from, and I'm not going to oversell it. If you've been running with significant gaps, you'll probably notice steadier energy, faster recovery between sessions, and fewer of those low-grade fatigue days within 4 to 8 weeks. If your nutrition is already dialled and your stress is low, it's more about maintenance than transformation. Best way to know is to test it. Take it for 8 weeks, pay attention, decide for yourself.
Where to go from here
I'm not here to preach. Defence isn't going to fix every problem you have, and a multivitamin can't outwork a bad diet. But if you're training hard, working hard, and you suspect the basics aren't quite covered, this is the cheapest, simplest insurance policy I know.
4 capsules a day. Doses the research backs. Forms your body can use. £0.80 per day. Take it for 8 weeks. See what changes.
About the author
Ben Coomber is the founder of Awesome Supplements and a multi-award winning high performance coach. He's a Performance Nutritionist (CISSN), Human Performance Coach (BSc), and Strength & Conditioning Coach (L4), with 20 years in the industry. He's the bestselling author of How to Live an Awesome Life and host of our very own podcast ‘The Dose is Everything’.