The short answer is yes. Try
as we might, most of us just can't or don’t eat a good, nutritious diet in their
meals every day. Some of us have health issues which don’t let us absorb the
right vitamins from our food.
We need the help of vitamins and
supplements to fulfill our recommended daily requirements. Each vitamin has to
be taken in different strengths and quantities. Like Vitamin E, is most beneficial
in large doses, doses far greater (though very safe) than the amounts you could
ever get only from your food.
Supplements are a safe and
inexpensive way to make sure you're getting all the vitamins, which may be
missing from your daily diet. If we are missing any of the main vitamins or
supplements from our daily meals then we can become deficient in some of the
vitamins. Being deficient in any important vitamin can have very bad and
negative consequences on our bodies and health.
Taking supplements can improve your
health and get rid of your vitamin deficiencies.
How to choose the right Vitamin?
When you go to any health
store or pharmacy you will see piles and piles of beautiful attractive bottles
of vitamins and nutritional supplements with great marketing slogans. You will
wonder what that stuff is and do you really need it.
How will you choose from
the huge stack and find out which one is the best for you?
To decide wisely which ones
to choose, you need to understand what each vitamin does and why you need them. Some simple blood tests can easily tell you whether you are deficient
in any vitamin or not. Then either you can get it from food or take that
vitamin in the form of a supplement. You need to understand what minerals do for you and why you need
them. You need to understand how the vitamins and
minerals in your food affect you and how everything else in your food affects
you as well.
You need to understand
which of those other supplements are valuable to your health and which aren't.
Although all those bottles
on the shelves may seem confusing and a little scary, they're really not.
Once you understand the
easy basics of vitamins and minerals, you'll be able to pick the supplements
that will help your health.
Vitamins: Why they’re
Vital
A vitamin is an organic chemical compound our bodies require in very small
amounts for normal growth, metabolism and health. Vitamins are an essential
part of our bodies which we need to live a healthy life.
We get our daily dose of vitamins
from food or from supplements—you can't make them in your body.
There are many types of
vitamins and we need every single one of them, without any exceptions.
Vitamins are not food or a substitute for food. They have no calories. Our
bodies need vitamins, especially the B vitamins, to convert food to energy.
Types of Vitamins
Fat-Soluble
Vitamins
Fat-soluble vitamins are
stored in our bodies, mostly in the form of fatty tissues and some of them are
also deposited in our liver. Vitamins
A, E, D and K are some of
the fat-soluble types. They dissolve in fat but not water. You have to be
careful in the consumption of these vitamins as getting too much can cause an excess amount in your body and cause problems.
Water-Soluble
Vitamins
These types of vitamins are
not stored in our bodies for very long. That's because they are easily dissolved
in water. Any excess of these is carried out of your body through urine. Vitamin
B and C are some of the water-soluble ones. Because these vitamins are not stored
in our bodies for long, you need to take them every day to maintain your recommended
requirement.
Overdose and excess intake
of these types of vitamins are very rare unless you take massive doses. The extra
just washes out without doing any harm.
How Much Do We Need
Every day?
According to the doctors
and scientists at the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, to
meet our basic needs for each vitamin, assuming you're an average healthy adult
man or woman, we can follow the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) chart.
Check out the chart to see
the RDAs for vitamins. These are the minimum amounts you
should be getting every
day, preferably from your food (and from vitamin pills if you need to).
Adult RDAs for Vitamins
Vitamin RDA
for Men RDA
for Women
Fat-Soluble
Vitamin A 1,000 RE or 5,000 IU 800 RE or 4,000 IU
Vitamin D 5
mcg or 200 IU 5
mcg or 200 IU
Vitamin E 10
mg or 15 IU
8 mg or 12 IU
Vitamin K 80
mcg 65 mcg
Water-Soluble
Vitamin C 60
mg 60 mg
B Vitamins:
Thiamin 1.5
mg 1.1 mg
Riboflavin 1.7
mg 1.3 mg
Niacin
19 mg 15 mg
Niacin 19 mg 15 mg
Pyridoxine
2.0 mg 1.6 mg
Folic acid 200
mcg 180
mcg
Cobalamin 2.0
mcg 2.0 mcg
If you were counting, you would
have noticed that this chart has only listed 11 vitamins. Two B vitamins,
biotin and pantothenic acid, are not listed here. That's because even though you
need to have them, they don't have RDAs. Why not? Because you get these
vitamins so easily from your food, even if you have incredibly bad eating
habits, no one is ever really deficient in them. And if no one's ever
deficient, there's no point in bothering to set an RDA.
The
Measure of Good Health
The
one thing you may have noticed about the vitamins chart is the way in which the
RDAs are mentioned in different measurement units like mg and mcg. Usually, the
amounts of vitamins (and minerals and other supplements) are given using the
metric system. Metric measurements are not always used. But when it comes to
vitamins, minerals, and supplements, you have to understand the measurements:
One
gram (g) equals to 1,000 milligrams (mg). One gram is approximately equal to one-quarter
of a teaspoon, or 0.035 of an ounce. There is about 4,000 mg in a teaspoon.
One
milligram equals to 1,000 micrograms (mcg). A microgram is 1/1,000 of a milligram.
Beyond
the Basics
We'll
use the RDA as the rock-bottom, bare minimum amount you need to get every day
for a particular vitamin or mineral. That's because the RDAs are only the amounts
needed to prevent disease in ordinary healthy people. They are, in our opinion
and the opinion of many other nutritionists, doctors, and researchers, the
least you should get. Maybe in time, these RDAs will also be increased according
to the change in environment.
In
many cases, we believe the RDAs are far from the amount you need to reach
optimal good health or to prevent many serious health problems, like heart
disease.
As
you'll discover, there are many, many good reasons for taking more sometimes much
more than the RDA. There are also sometimes many good reasons to stick to the
RDA and not take any extra and we'll cover those issues as well.
Minerals:
Essential Part of Health
A
mineral is a natural inorganic chemical compound that your body must have for
normal growth, metabolism and to make many enzymes and hormones. Like vitamins,
you must get your minerals from your food.
We
need minerals every day just like we need our vitamins. Trace Minerals are
required in a small quantity by our bodies. We need trace minerals in very
small doses, but still they are very important for our health.
Minerals
There
are many minerals we need each day. Take a look at the chart to see the RDAs
for the major minerals.
Adult
RDAs for Minerals
Mineral
RDA for adults
Calcium
1000
mg
Chloride 750
mg
Magnesium
350
mg
Phosphorus 700
mg
Potassium 2,000 mg
Sodium
500
mg
One
of the minerals, Sulfur is missing from the above chart. That’s because we need
over 100 mg of sulfur a day, which we can easily get from our foods. It’s very
rare for someone to be deficient in Sulfur.
Trace
Minerals
How
many trace elements you need to get and in what amounts are open to a lot of
discussion. We know for sure that you need very small amounts of boron,
chromium, cobalt, copper, iodine, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel,
selenium, silicon, tin, vanadium, and zinc.
What
about the tiny, tiny amounts of other minerals, like aluminum and lithium, that
are found in your body? We don't really know why you have them or how much you
need.
A
lot of the trace minerals don't have RDAs—we just don't know enough to set any.
Your need for boron, for example, was only discovered in the mid-1980s, and
researchers are still trying to figure out what the RDA should be. Instead, some of
these minerals have Safe and Adequate Intakes (SAIs).
These
are best guesses as to how much you probably need. They're often given as a
fairly broad range. For example, the SAI for chromium seems to be anywhere from
50 to 200 mcg. The chart lists the RDAs and SAIs for the trace minerals that
have them—we've left off the ones that don't.
Adult
RDAs or SAIs for Trace Minerals
Trace
Mineral RDA SAI
Chromium 50–200 mcg
Copper 1.5–3.0 mg
Iodine
150 mcg
Iron
10–15 mg
Manganese 2.5–5.0 mg
Molybdenum 75–250 mcg
Selenium
55–70
mcg
Zinc
12–15 mg
What's
missing from the chart? Boron, cobalt, nickel, silicon, tin, and vanadium. You
easily get these trace minerals from your food. Very few people will ever be
deficient in them.
Do
You Really Need Vitamins and Minerals in the form of Supplements?
A
lot of vitamins and minerals are lost between the farm and reaching our plates.
A lot of factors like exposure to heat, light, air and pollution affect the
fruit and vegetables and many vitamins and minerals are lost in this process.
Many others are lost during cooking of our foods.
The
average person can get the RDAs for vitamins and minerals simply by eating a
reasonable diet containing plenty of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Yeah, right. First of all, who's that mythical average person? Not anyone we
know. The Doctors and Researchers calculate the RDAs on the basis considering
you as an adult under age 60who's in good health, has perfect digestion, isn't
overweight, leads a totally stress-free life, doesn't have a chronic disease,
and does not take regular medicine. The RDAs also assume that you really manage
to eat a good diet every day.
Let's
get real here: Even on a good day, you can't always manage a completely
healthful diet. No one has the time or energy to do all that grocery and cooking?
On a normal day, most of us eat at least one meal away from home anyway due to
our busy schedules. It’s very hard to eat maintain a healthy eating routine
these days.
The
fact is, most of us don't try all that hard, and most of us don't meet all the
RDAs from our diet.
It
is very hard to reach the RDA goal for vitamin and minerals.
Everyone
should try to eat a healthy diet naturally rich in Vitamins and Minerals. For
example, women in the ages of 25 to 50 are recommended to get 1000 mg of
calcium daily in order to strengthen their bones. For consuming 1000mg of
calcium through food, you would need to drink at least 3 glasses of milk every
day. That can be very difficult for some who may be allergic to milk or have
lactose intolerance.
One
of the biggest problems with the RDAs is that they assume you're in optimum
health and eat about the recommended amount of calories a day. Not everyone can
follow a healthy diet plan and in our current society, which has become very
diet, fitness and style conscious, many people are on a weight reducing diet to
stay in perfect body shape. That type of diet doesn't provide good nutrition. Because
of these changes in our society its very difficult for any one to get the recommended
amount of vitamins and minerals they need from their food.
It
should be very clear to all that vitamin and mineral supplements aren't a
substitute for healthy eating. They're not also a guard against the effects of
bad habits, like smoking, drugs or not getting much exercise.
But we know that you can't always eat like you should and sometimes you need a
vitamin or mineral supplement because you can’t reach your ideal RDA goal just
from your food.
That's
the reason why vitamin and mineral supplements are so important. It is always a
good choice to take a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement. It makes sure
you don’t get deficient in some of the important vitamins. You can also take one
or more vitamins or minerals separately if you’re bodies are lacking it. Here
too supplements make sure you're getting enough.
Some
vitamins and supplements are safe in large doses while some may become toxic. Always
consult your doctor before starting any new vitamin or supplement and get a
daily dosage plan according to your requirement.
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