Even if you are careful with your diet, the food you eat may still not give your body enough nutrients to function optimally. For this reason, many Americans consume nutritional supplements, especially multivitamins. Developing a habit of daily consumption of multivitamins will benefit you in several ways.
Vitamin C and Zinc can bolster your immunity, enhancing your body’s ability to fight off infections. Vitamin D will boost your brain function while increasing the health of your bones. Antioxidants in multivitamins may significantly lower your chances of succumbing to any form of cancer.
However, not all multivitamins are the same. While some can bring these incredible benefits, others can be harmful to you or may not be sufficient. It is important to look for several aspects when purchasing a multivitamin.
Clean Ingredients
It’s important to know what exactly constitutes the multivitamins you’re consuming, and luckily, the information is right there on the packaging. From the label, you can tell if the multivitamin will give you more than the recommended portion of fat-soluble vitamins, like Vitamin A. If you consume too much Vitamin A combined with the portion of the nutrient you get from food, this could lead to liver problems down the line.
Gummy vitamins have become extremely popular, mainly because they taste like candy. However, do gummy vitamins actually work? Yes, but they owe their sweetness to sugar, which can have several adverse effects if taken in excessive quantities.
It is advisable to monitor the amount of sugar you consume from a multivitamin versus the sugar you take in from other sources. If you find your sugar consumption is high for your age and lifestyle, you might want to find another source of supplementary vitamins. Or you may need to tweak your diet—it is possible, although difficult, to get all the vitamins your body needs from food.
Look at Daily Values
A good multivitamin will contain 100 percent of the daily value for most of the nutrients contained. That being said, it’s important to note that some nutrients are often still lacking, such as calcium. Also, note that some nutrients are intentionally kept low to avoid adverse reactions. If you require more portions of these, you will need to get them from your diet.
These nutritional requirements vary depending on factors like age and gender. Pregnant women will have a higher need for supplementary nutrients as they must sustain the growing child. Be sure to research based on your own needs.
It would be best to consider adopting a diet that will give you the right amounts of the nutrients your body needs. This action is critical because multivitamins and dietary supplements won’t contain all your nutritional requirements. Fiber, for instance, is essential for your digestion and the assimilation of nutrients from the food you eat.
As you structure your diet, you must ensure that it gives you adequate quantities of the essential nutrients. Low-fat milk and other dairy products will give you the calcium you need, while legumes and fish will provide you with potassium. The fiber you need to smooth your digestion is found in watermelon and various other fruits and vegetables.
Dietary Restrictions
There are some details in the multivitamin label’s fine print that you should pay close attention to. The gummy vitamins many people love contain some non-nutritional elements that are there to give them their shape and form. Some will contain allergens that may cause you to have an unpleasant reaction.
Others are manufactured using the skin or bones of animals, which will not bode well for vegetarians or vegans. Bee pollen, considered unsafe for pregnant women, is also present in some vitamin supplements. Be sure the vitamin you choose is safe for your dietary restrictions.
The Right Supplements For You
In an ideal world, you would meet all your nutritional requirements from the food you eat. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case, and natural phenomena like menopause and pregnancy can drastically increase your requirements. External factors such as lack of sleep, stress and lack of physical activity can leave your body unable to assimilate the nutrients it needs from meals.
As you shop around for supplements to fill this gap, you need to remember that different people have different supplement needs. If you’re a vegetarian, for instance, you will want to ensure you’re taking supplemental iron to compensate for the iron you would have derived from meat. Expectant mothers will want to take in extra folic acid to aid the development of their babies.
Whichever multivitamin you choose, ensure it is right for you and doesn’t contain any ingredients that will harm you. Most importantly, seek to balance the nutrients you receive from the supplement with those you take in from your regular meals. The right balance will make for a healthier lifestyle overall.
