Are Multivitamin Supplements Really Essential to Your Health?

Multivitamin supplements can be a good way to get the vitamins you need, especially if your own diet doesn’t give you all the nutrients you need. That said, of course, multivitamin supplements can’t do everything and won’t replace the benefits of a healthy diet in general; they will simply fill in gaps for those times when you just can’t quite eat right.

Multivitamin supplements often include minerals. Some of the minerals that people are prone to be deficient in are iron, magnesium, zinc, and calcium. Multivitamin supplements contain many different kinds of vitamins, including the ones listed here.

Vitamin A is found in most multivitamin supplements. It’s rare to be deficient in vitamin A unless you are elderly. However, vitamin A is necessary for your immune system to function at its best, and it is sometimes recommended to prevent certain types of birth defects or to prevent bone loss. However, vitamin A can be toxic in large doses, so it should never be taken to excess.

Beta-carotene is another supplement found in multivitamin supplements. It functions as an antioxidant and can also increase white blood cell count; it also boosts your immunity. Beta-carotene and vitamin A also are important to eye health.

Folic acid is especially important during pregnancy and is included in prenatal multivitamin supplements. Folic acid deficiencies can lead to low birth weight and an increased risk of neural tube defects such as spina bifida in babies.

There are quite a few B vitamins, and most of them are found in multivitamin supplements. Folic acid is technically a B vitamin. Pyridoxine is another. Along with B12, pyridoxine is important for controlling levels of homocysteine in the blood. High levels of homocysteine can lead to heart disease, strokes, and Alzheimer’s disease. Vitamin B12 can also help fight heart disease, anemia, and memory loss. Thiamine, also called vitamin B1, is important for proper brain function. The vitamin niacin, also called B3, prevents a disease called pellagra. Pellagra is relatively rare, but it is caused by a deficiency in niacin and results in scaly sores on the skin, inflamed mucous membranes, diarrhea, and mental confusion.

Vitamin C is an antioxidant and a booster of the immune system that helps keep skin healthy and helps in healing of wounds and scars.

Vitamin D is essential to proper absorption of the mineral calcium. A deficiency of vitamin D can lead to bone loss, fractures, and a disease called rickets, which can result in severe bone pain. Though vitamin D can be manufactured by the human body from exposure to sunlight, it is included in multivitamin supplements too because the deficiency can be so painful. However, that doesn’t mean that you should take mega doses of it.

If you shop around, you can find multivitamin supplements that contain vitamin K. Deficiency in vitamin K can cause bleeding and leads to easy bruising and osteoporosis (brittle bones).

Along with vitamin D and vitamin K, calcium is a mineral found in many multivitamin supplements. It is necessary for building and maintaining adequate bone mass. Consuming enough calcium reduces the risk of bone fractures in older people.

Multivitamin supplements’ labels may say that they provide more than 100% of your recommended daily allowance of specific vitamins, but it’s important to be careful not to overdo taking in these vitamins. Most multivitamin supplements’ levels are safe to take on a daily basis, but if you supplement vitamins individually, you could unwittingly overdose on vitamins, thus incurring significant risk.

Although it’s possible that your diet provides 100% of your recommended daily allowance of the necessary vitamins and minerals, it’s relatively rare that any one person can do so every single day, especially with the lives most of us lead. There are lots of different multivitamin supplements available on the market, and you may need to do some research to decide which one is best for you. If you experience side effects when you begin to take a multivitamin supplement, stop taking the supplement and see if the problem subsides. If it does, ask your doctor to recommend a multivitamin supplement for you.

There are about a dozen recognized vitamins that humans are recommended to consume in certain quantities. A long term shortage in any of them can cause symptoms of vitamin deficiency. While multivitamin supplements can do a great job of preventing vitamin deficiencies, they’re not a substitute for a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet and regular exercise.

Taking multivitamin supplements over a period of time will enhance your body’s general health condition. Visit www.discount-vitamins-and-supplements.com for a huge collection of multivitamin supplements products available at your fingertips.