Do Multivitamins Really Help?
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.
The question is often asked whether multivitamins should be taken each day. There are people who believe that we will get all the nutrition we require from the foods that we eat but this is no longer the case.
Many of the foods we eat are processed and have all sorts of additives that can be detrimental to our health.
Even fresh foods don’t have the same minerals that they once had.
In some growing areas most of the minerals that were once in the soil have long since been depleted and the food that is grown in that soil doesn’t have the same values as we have come to expect.
Additional stresses are placed on our health with pollution, work stress and so on, all making demands on our body and the nutrients that we need. Even fitness training, while good for our health, places additional demands on the body and this is best addressed with supplementation.
A good multivitamin taken once or twice a day can help to balance out any deficiencies that we might have. This will help us to train better and to stay fitter and healthier and not become as susceptible to illness. Most of the best multivitamin supplements include a balanced proportion of vitamins and nutrients that meet the recommended daily dosage for an average person.
If you are doing intensive fitness training then your requirements might be higher than normal and that might necessitate additional supplementation. Once of the most effective methods of testing your needs for vitamins and minerals is through hair sample testing.
Hair sample tests can give you an accurate graph of your levels of vitamins and minerals and based on this information you can supplement your diet to bring back a balance in your nutrition.
Sometimes deficits in these areas can take months to address and without accurate testing the process will take longer. Everything from smoking to alcohol will deplete the body of essential vitamins and minerals. Supplements will help to counter these effects.