All Facts about Vitamins

Everybody knows that it’s important to get enough vitamins. Unfortunately there is no exact science of the facts about vitamins for determining just how much of any given vitamin, mineral, or essential nutrient anybody needs at any given time.

Your age, your genetics, the varying combination of the foods you eat and the times you eat them all interact with disease conditions to determine how much of various nutrients you need. Your needs aren’t exactly the same as anybody else’s. Your needs aren’t even exactly the same each and every day. It’s one of the basic facts about vitamins that a daily multivitamin is extremely important to ensure good health.

A multivitamin is a preparation intended to supplement a human diet with vitamins, dietary minerals and other nutritional elements. Such preparations are available in the form of tablets, capsules, pastilles, powders, liquids and injectable formulations. Other than injectable formulations, which are only available and administered under medical supervision. Multivitamins are recognized by the United Nations’ authority on food standards as a category of food.

A multivitamin/mineral supplement is defined in the United States as a supplement containing 3 or more vitamins and minerals but does not include herbs, hormones, or drugs, with each nutrient at a dose below the tolerable upper level determined by the Food and Drug Board and the maximum daily intake to not cause a risk for adverse health effects.

A daily multivitamin is a great nutrition insurance policy.The human body needs vitamins to function properly. Each of the 13 essential vitamins (A, C, D, E, K, B12, and the 7 B-complex vitamins) provides the regulation of a crucial function. We acquire a majority of the vitamins our body needs from food. When there is a deficiency, we are in danger of becoming seriously ill or even dying. Vitamin supplementation can reverse illness caused by vitamin deficiency, sometimes miraculously. Nowadays, it is very rare to find someone who isn’t taking a daily multivitamin. Since there is a good chance that most of the individuals who take a daily multivitamin are eating a variety of foods, is it really necessary that they take a multivitamin? It may not be necessary, but everyone can benefit from taking a multivitamin.

The obvious benefit of taking a multivitamin is to prevent deficiency. In some situations your dietary needs may increase. Pregnant women, for example, are generally advised to start taking multivitamins in their first trimester. This is to ensure that they receive the proper nutrition and pass it on to their unborn child. By taking a multivitamin every day a pregnant woman can decrease her risk of passing malnutrition on to her baby. However, the benefits of taking a multivitamin every day go beyond replenishing nutrient stores.

With so many advancements, the world is moving at a pace that just gets faster and faster. People often feel like they can’t keep up. They try to do too much and wind up in a stressful condition. Another benefit of taking multivitamins is that it combats stress. There are numerous stress formulations that can keep you mental healthy as well as energize you. In addition to these short-term benefits, taking a multivitamin every day can also reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

While taking a multivitamin on a daily basis makes good nutritional sense, it is not a magic bullet. It is often the case that people who suffer symptoms of illness attempt to cure themselves by taking multivitamins. This can be a serious problem. Some health conditions require special attention. If you have symptoms of illness you should seek medical attention. Sometimes supplementation with specific nutrients may be more appropriate in order to address any individual specific needs. For example, CoQ10 is especially helpful for those at risk for heart disease, and Vitamins C and E, taken in combination to help ward off Alzheimer’s disease. A multivitamin supplement usually contains the recommended daily dose of a variety of vitamins and other nutrients. Sometimes, multivitamin supplements are formulated for specific age groups, or individual conditions such as pregnancy. Multivitamins also are at their most efficient when they are in liquid form, as the body has been proven to absorb them five times more efficiently than multivitamins in pill form.Many people report a feeling of general well being when they are taking their daily multivitamins regularly. The individual vitamins and nutrients in a quality daily multivitamin dose delivers to you their specific benefits of each individual vitamin, plus you get the combined (synergistic) benefits of all of the ingredients working together. Vitamin E, for example, a fat-soluble antioxidant vitamin helps to neutralize potentially damaging free radicals in the body and it is particularly important for the protection of cell membranes as well as maintaining healthy skin, heart and circulation, nerves, muscles and red blood cells. Vitamin C on the other hand is water soluble, but like Vitamin E, it is an antioxidant. It helps white blood cells combat infection, is essential for wound healing, for the formation of collagen, for healthy skin, and for the formation of other important structural materials in bones, teeth and capillaries. It also helps with the absorption of iron from plant sources. Vitamins D, K, A, and other nutrients in a multivitamin supplement all have specific beneficial effects on our bodies ranging from minimizing the risks of heart problems to helping to ward off Alzeheimer’s disease.

The majority of One-per-day multivitamins usually contain vitamin B-complex, along with variable levels of vitamins A and D, depending on the type of multivitamin. While some one-per-day multivitamins contain high levels of vitamin A and vitamin D, many multivitamins do not. As the body does not require as many minerals as vitamins, most multivitamins include small amounts of essential minerals including copper, zinc, and iron.

Some one-a-day multivitamins may not provide sufficient amounts of many essential nutrients for people who eat a traditional Western diet, who usually require additional amounts of vitamin E, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 11:39 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.