The Importance of Vitamin Supplements

F irst thing first: the best way to ensure you’re getting all the right vitamins & minerals into your system is to start with a healthy, whole diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables! This is the best possible base to springboard from and will help to ensure any supplements you take, are being absorbed effectively by your body. Once you’ve got the basics right, you can start to look at how you might augment and enhance your healthy diet with vitamins and other supplements. A good place to start is with your doctor and you might want to seek advice from a naturopath or nutritionist as well. Have your Family GP run some basic bloods to see where there might be deficiencies. In the U.S., vitamins, minerals & botanicals are regulated by the FDA and are considered foods, not drugs. This means that supplements cannot legally claim to treat or cure a disease. While you are unlikely to do any major damage to your system by taking random supplements, you’ll always see better results if you actually target the areas where your body is lacking and there are some vitamin or mineral supplements that need to be monitored. For example, lots of women tend to be low in iron and a daily dose of iron tablets might help to combat things like fatigue. That said, iron is a tricky mistress and too much can be a bad thing: make sure you’re getting the right advice from your doctor or pharmacist first. Its also good to know how vitamins and minerals interact with each other and increase (or sometimes decrease) the absorption of fellow supplements. Those taking iron tablets often receive recommendations to take vitamin C at the same time – vitamin C in your system assists the body with absorbing iron from the stomach! And if you’re taking calcium supplements, adding a dose of Vitamin D into the mix will help in the regulation of calcium in the body, and the two working together can better affect bone mass. Once you have a good understanding of where your diet might be deficient, you can start to really hone in on target areas and choose the supplements that will give you the most benefit.